August 9, 2023 • 38 mins
We send Kaleidoscope’s Costas Linos along with investigative journalist Nick Niarchos on an adventure through anarchist enclaves, island retreats, and isolated monasteries to find out why Greece embraces outlaws like Vassilis.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
So if there's anything I've learned from this crazy story,
it's that it's one thing to catch the thief, but
it's another to understand one. Because everything Vasilis Paliocostas does,
it's drama. Okay, He's holding up banks with Kalisa Covs,
he's leading police on dukes of hazard style chases, escaping
jails by helicopter, abducting millionaires, and somehow he's winning praise
(00:40):
while doing it. And that's actually the part. I can't
get over the praise. By now, We've interviewed almost what
like fifty people for this podcast, and the praise is
something we keep hearing no matter where we go or
like who we talk to, from city folks in Athens
to police officers on the hunt, to even Alexander Hayte,
(01:00):
the man he kidnapped.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Frankly, it got us all wondering.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Is Vasili's just that good? Is his charm that irresistible?
I mean, why are there so many sympathizers or is
there just something about Greece that makes people all over
the country.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Just want to cheer for outlaws.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So in one of our favorite investigative reporters offered to
help us out. We obviously couldn't pass it up, so
we sent him on a rambling adventure from the den
of anarchists with this have.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Been a place of tany of Prussos who come and
to hang out or not really from what we was
got today to.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
A holy mountain rumored to hide bad guys.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
If somebody was running from the little would they come ahead?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Do you think Honda, in search of clues for our
modern Robin.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Hood, just said that he had a client many years ago,
and apparently it was by those questions.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I'm Miles Gray for iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope. This is
the Good Thing, Chapter one, Sympathy for the Devil. Greece
(02:31):
is a country of contradictions. On one hand, it's super old,
you know, after all, it is the cradle of democracy,
and at the same time it's super young. I mean,
the modern state isn't even two centuries old. Also, Greece
is technically part of Europe, but culturally it's more similar
to the Balkan states. So everywhere you turn there's a
(02:54):
lot of push and pull, and that has made Greece
a very difficult place for a government to unify what
works in one region doesn't always work in another so
Greece has kind of become a Petri dish of descent.
I mean, the country claims to be the birthplace of anarchism,
and it's home to anarchist communes and autonomous neighborhoods. There
(03:17):
are even entire islands that thumb their nose at the state.
These are the kinds of places where people don't just
cheer for Vasilis Paliocostas, they agree with him. One day
we got chatting about all of this with our friend
Nick Nachos. He's an investigative reporter, a Greek, albeit one
who grew up abroad, and it turns out he's been
(03:40):
obsessed with the Vasilis Palocostas story for years. He thought
that to understand Paliocostas, we needed to understand Greece, and
not the picture postcard version with the white buildings and
the beautiful.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Ocean, but some of its most remote corners.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
And lucky for us, Nick has contacts all over the
country and he specializes in exploring the many corners of
the globe. Like when we first made contact, he was
reporting in Democratic Republic of the Congo. Then he was
in a nickel mine in Indonesia, and then the next
time we pick up the phone, he's in Yemen. So
while George and Christina are hunting down leeds in Tricola,
(04:19):
we sent Nick and our producer cost Us to Athens
with the mission to explore some of the remotest parts
of Greece in search of outlaws and outcasts and hopes
that though find what makes Palio Costa so alluring. So
for this episode, I'm throwing it over to Nick and
Costas and letting them tell the rest of the story.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
So we just come into Exarchia.
Speaker 7 (04:49):
I'm starting out in Athens, and right next to the
bars and cafes where Greece's most powerful people gather in
central Athens, there's a place where the shadow of Vasilis
Paliocosa salooms large, a community called exad Here. So Cossus
and I decided to go there.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
You understand that you're coming into exad Here when you
see the police trucks on the side.
Speaker 8 (05:11):
Of the street.
Speaker 9 (05:12):
Yes, so those are riot policemans.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
You have stories of friends who visited Athens for the
summer and took eb and B's and Exa here and
ended up you know, being tag asked, which is always
a good part of the holiday.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Exarkia has been at the center of Greece's anti establishment
movement since the seventies. In fact, it's one of the
oldest anarchist neighborhoods in all of Europe. We're here because
we're hoping this place can give us some insight into
the culture that turned Vasilis into a folk hero. We
park and start our walk through the neighborhood, hoping this
(05:47):
place can give us insight into the culture that turned
Vasilis into a folk hero. One of the first things
we notice is that there's graffiti everywhere. There are signs
for collectives and communist bookstores, anarchist slogans and posters plastered
down alleyways.
Speaker 7 (06:04):
All cops are bussing or its go home. I still
fucking hate the nationalist ideas give birth to graveyards. The
various politics are, to say the least in your face.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
We're trying to find this cafe that we lant about
from one of our sources.
Speaker 8 (06:21):
So so Celes Cafe is the anarchist stronghold within the
anergist stronghold.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
But when you google it on Yelp, the reviews are
all one star because apparently it's monitored by the security services,
that it's full of cops.
Speaker 7 (06:37):
The people running this place are friendly, but they do
not want us recording. That're afraid our microphones might pick
up conversations the regulars are having, so we turn off
our mics. We order beers, and we chat and people
tell us about the neighborhood, how it's changed, and it's true,
just ten or fifteen years ago, visitors would be worn
(06:59):
to avoid exad here. But what everyone really wants to
talk about is how the state wants to gentrify Exadia
out of existence. In twenty nineteen, after the new center
right government came in, things started to change and people
started feeling that, in fact, this gentrification was a political
(07:19):
tool to get rid of the anti government activity.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
But as we sat there, it was hard for me
to see the cafe as a threat. It's just a
place to have a beer and some strong espresso, and
yet the ideas that get shared in a space like
this have made it a place authorities fear. So I
just went to the bathroom and there was a very
telling slogan scribbled on the wall. It read, if you
want robbers make banks and if you want criminals make laws. Frankly,
(07:47):
it sounds exactly like something Vasilies would say. Actually, it
is something he says in his book. He says democracy
needs enemies to sustain itself, and it invents them by
inventing crime.
Speaker 9 (08:04):
Do you want to go in, like.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
If you want to be the parking Okay, let's go.
Speaker 9 (08:13):
We just have time to.
Speaker 7 (08:16):
Eventually we leave the cafe and head towards Exactia's main square.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
A lot of riot police and what is it?
Speaker 8 (08:24):
It's a Tuesday night.
Speaker 9 (08:25):
There's no there's nothing happening.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
Yeah, because there are noise, there's no no one on
the street.
Speaker 9 (08:30):
There's more crops than there are citizens.
Speaker 7 (08:33):
There's been visible tension here for a while now, and
it goes beyond anger over development. Back in December two
thousand and eight, a police officer killed a fifteen year
old kid named Alexandroskirigoropolos, who was hanging out with his
friends in the neighborhood. Within ours, demonstrators filled the streets
(08:57):
of Exadia and violence escalated quickly. Crowds through rocks, fireworks,
hugged molotov cocktails at police cars. As news spread to
other Greek cities. Protests and riots followed. Mass demonstrations has
led to mass arrests, arseness, lit up banks, police fired
tear gas, anarchists deathonated firebombs, and swat teams were called.
(09:21):
In what began as a reaction to a teenager's murder
grew into an expression of more widespread anger at police brutality,
at Greece's political elite, at the financial tsunami slowly consuming
the country. Frankly, the kinds of things that would make
Vasilis Palocosta say, I told you so. Our sound guy Alexis,
(09:43):
who has more than a bit of sympathy for anarchists,
remembers when police had flooded exactly here.
Speaker 9 (09:49):
Up until three years ago, you didn't really have police here,
A lot of undercover police, but not really police in uniform.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
And now it feels sort of more like under occupation exact.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Yeah, certainly, if peace under occupation doesn't feel it is underratuation.
Speaker 7 (10:10):
Clearly things are different now. But before there were cops
on every corner, and before he became the most wanted
man in the country. I have to wonder if Fasilis
Paliucostas would have felt at home here.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
Would this have been a place that Palocostus would come
and hang out.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
I'd be surprised if he'd never been here before. I'd
very very surprised if he wasn't intimately familiar with these
streets or with the people who live here. I mean,
this is the hotbed of the ideology and the culture
that celebrates by low Costas.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Not everyone in Greece celebrates by Loo Costas. There's definitely
some animosity towards him from both politicians and cops. What's
really interesting is that there's this shared understanding of why
Greek people are so sympathetic towards this culture of rebellion.
Before we started on our tour of the country's nooks
and crannies looking for Greek dissidents, before we even came
(11:07):
to excite here, we reached out to some of the
most powerful people we could think of, and surprisingly, a
former foreign deputy Minister, Marcus Boulleries and the former Prime
Minister of Greeks, George Papandreau, both sat down to talk.
Speaker 10 (11:21):
With us and let's say, would you like something doing.
Speaker 7 (11:28):
When pap Andreu approached us, I was surprised at how
tall he was. He's got an impressive mustache and his
vibe is professorial.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Yeah, let's start with this big question, why the goold
pay for?
Speaker 9 (11:42):
Why does this exist?
Speaker 10 (11:44):
There has been a culture in Greece of you know,
people who have stood up to authority, people who are
loan you know fighters or resistance fighters. So this is
part of the part of the Greek history and tradition
and culture to somehow resisting the higher power, resisting authoritarianism,
(12:12):
resisting a dictatorship occupation.
Speaker 7 (12:17):
This was a point we actually heard from multiple people
that Greeks, because of their history with occupation with the
Ottomans and the Hunda, are by default defiant. Of course,
Greece has a history, a very recent history at that
of government officials abusing power for personal gain. In twenty fifteen,
the government's top anti corruption watchdog reported that almost every
(12:40):
contract between the government and private corporations involved kickbacks. The
company Siemens in particular, had budgeted ten to fifteen million
dollars every year just to bribe Greek officials. To say
the least, this has compelled people to take a skeptical
view of the government and large corporations make for.
Speaker 10 (12:59):
These complex financial systems, banks and so on, have made
people feel not so much controlled. One of the reactions
is to look for an authoritarian figure, or maybe a savior.
A savior could be a robin Hood. You put your
hope in this robin hood.
Speaker 7 (13:15):
It's human nature in times of crisis to look for help,
and a robin Hood figure feeds that need. But Valerius
told us it's never pure charity. Robin Hood always wants
something in return.
Speaker 5 (13:29):
So even under automan occupation, when the thieves would come
down to rub from the Turks, they didn't keep it
from themselves.
Speaker 9 (13:35):
They would give it to the other villagers. It's an
ancient logic, it's not a new one. By redistributing you
you create friends, you create allies, and you find hideouts immediately.
So it's also a practical thing.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Balerie's words were spinning through my mind as we Twurdic
start here. I just kept thinking, who's Balocost has given
money to? Was it a strategic way to find new
friends and new hideouts? And as I looked at the
people walking by, I wondered, who here is keeping his secrets.
Speaker 7 (14:09):
We keep walking and past the intersection where Kirigoropolos was murdered.
There's a memorial there now, and directly across from it,
a swanky real estate development is under construction. And then
we see a music store. It's a plain and simple
looking place, no warning, no sign outside, but just a
large glass window that has been caked over with years
(14:32):
of grime. This shop makes and sells buzuki. That's the
type of Greek loot that you've definitely heard before in
the theme song for this show, for instance.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And there are buzukis everywhere on the walls, hanging from
the ceiling. The air is steeped in this beautiful smell
of fresh wood, and we begin chatting with a little
shop owner, an old timer who has been here for decades.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Do you think Palocrossus ever came to this neighborhood?
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Od siple gun shoulders? He said, Well, he was an
alley cat that goes everywhere, so he must have been
here as well. But also there was a knowing pause
when I asked her, do you think mister bel Costas
came by excited here?
Speaker 2 (15:12):
He said, do I think?
Speaker 9 (15:14):
As though you were suggesting that you know?
Speaker 7 (15:16):
And then, just as we're about to leave, the guy
starts telling us a story about a delivery he made
to an unusual customer.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
Just said that he had a client many years ago
who was renting a house to someone for whom money
was no object and who would always pay rent on time.
Speaker 9 (15:36):
So he delivered the buzuki to this house.
Speaker 5 (15:39):
To this house in the outskirts of Athens, and apparently
it was Balo Costas.
Speaker 7 (15:47):
To be clear, we have no way of fact checking this,
but what is true is that apparently you can walk
into a random buzuki shop in exat here and meet
someone with a first hand story about Basilis Palio Costas.
As we return to the streets, I can't help but
see traces of Vasilis everywhere, traces of his beliefs, his
(16:10):
antagonism toward police. It's literally written on the walls.
Speaker 6 (16:34):
So we're just coming down through the cloud cover towards
the career. Wow, look at it, it's incredible.
Speaker 8 (16:48):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (16:49):
Chapter two and of Exiles. We're in a small twin
prop plane just thirty miles off the coast of Turkey.
Below us, the a GMC is rough and choppy. Our
plane banks right and out of the window we can
see our destination. And then over here on the left
(17:10):
is that there's a hole in a rock, and that's
supposedly where Akras fell to. Karia is named for Icarus,
who you might recall from the folk tale, died after
flying too close to the sun. It's a bit ironic too.
In the story of Icarus, he flew here because he
was trying to escape political persecutions, which, as you'll see,
(17:30):
is a theme in these parts.
Speaker 11 (17:32):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Ikaria.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Please keep your signal fast.
Speaker 12 (17:35):
And up feel the single stop before leaving.
Speaker 7 (17:40):
Like Zaria, Ikaria is an enclave for anarchists, communists, and
other political dissonance, but the similarities end there. Ikarias olive
trees and hot springs. It's self sufficient, it's distant, and
it resists authority by staying far away from that's because
(18:02):
for a long time the Islanders were outlaws themselves. After
the Ottomans claimed KaiA as part of their empire in
fifteen twenty one, the Islanders faked the destruction of their
towns and retreated to the mountains, building houses with no
chimneys to avoid the tailtale signs of smoke. For over
one hundred and fifty years, the Islanders adopted a tactic
(18:23):
of invisibility and almost everyone thought the island was empty.
It's retained that independent street ever since.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
This is our.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
Our deep now. Well, there's four of us, four suitcases
audio equipment, trying to squeeze into Nissan Nika, which is
a very very small car.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Almost immediately we get a tip from some locals that
there might be a name the celebration, a party at
a restaurant nearby. So we drove down this desolate road
and actually missed it a couple of times, but we
finally spot the taverna stop outside and decide to head
in to speak to some people.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
In the taverna. We meet an American expat who's more
than happy to tell us about the charms of island life.
Speaker 9 (19:12):
But here is like.
Speaker 12 (19:16):
The clocks don't work. There is no time for anything,
and it goes on and on and on and on.
Back in the day, all these old people that they
lived to be one hundred and plush, you know, they
slipped all pretty much whenever they felt like it, and
they had no stress. They they had no bills.
Speaker 7 (19:38):
A few years ago, the New York Times magazine called
Ikaria the island where people forget to die. And it's true.
The island is a so called blue zone, one of
five places in the world where people just seem to
live forever. Studies suggest that the reasons for this longevity
are simple. People eat from their own gardens, they socialize
(20:00):
a lot, They rest when they need it, They don't
work too hard, They live simply.
Speaker 12 (20:06):
Most of these people here, they are I would say socialist.
I would say ninety percent of us of them are socialist.
It's how it's been for many, many years, and I
don't see it changed.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
In any time soon.
Speaker 12 (20:22):
And if I know somebody has a lot of money,
he's not a good person.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
Hikaria is one of the most left wing parts of Greece.
In the nineteen forties, during the Greek Civil War, the
government arrested leftists and deported them to the islands. It
was a policy they called administrative banishment. About thirteen thousand
people connected to the Communist Party were exiled to take
the carrier. And when these communists arrived, they stumbled upon
(20:52):
an old world society that was essentially already living their values.
But there is a dark side here. It's isolation and
anti state politics didn't just appeal to exiles and misfits,
it also gained a reputation as a place for bad
guys to hie. After the Pravadna, we hit the road again,
(21:16):
and I'm thinking about something A source told us about
Vasili's pale cost us that the only way he has
stayed hidden for so long is if the whole community
is willing to keep his existence a secret.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
That smells our cladge to be.
Speaker 9 (21:44):
We're also definitely lost.
Speaker 8 (21:46):
No we're not, believe we're not.
Speaker 13 (21:50):
Wait wait, wait, we are.
Speaker 9 (21:53):
We are loves the wrong way.
Speaker 7 (21:57):
We eventually find our bearings and stop at a few places.
We learned that in town has its own cooperative community,
and that there are self organizing neighborhoods everywhere. Some places
pay using an honor or a barter system.
Speaker 8 (22:11):
So everyone who who we've asked do you think vasilis
is here? Do you think he could be here, or
do you think he was here? Has been pretty doubtful.
But at the same time, and I mentioned this earlier today,
no one has laughed us out, no one has said
(22:32):
you're silly, But there's almost.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
A a sort of sense of pride.
Speaker 14 (22:39):
They think, well, he could come here in a way.
Speaker 7 (22:49):
The next day, when we sat down with the journalist
Jord Goswutzadas. We asked him if there was any chance
that you Carria could still be a place for someone
who might want to self excellent.
Speaker 15 (23:02):
My grand grand grandfather he cames from visage because it
was against the system, and he came here to hire himself. Okay,
it was very difficult to find him. Today, it's not
They can find you very easy, very so you can
hire here.
Speaker 7 (23:21):
People we spoke to agree that this isn't a good
place to hide these days. And perhaps it's because, like
exaia I, Carrier is changing. If Vacilis is in Greece,
it's not just a place that embraces his ideology or
a place with a strong sense of community, but a
place that has also resisted change. So our next stop
(23:41):
is one of those places, a place where time has
stopped and where outlaws are rumored to walk free. Chapter three,
(24:10):
The Holy Mountain.
Speaker 14 (24:18):
So we're just arriving here at the small port of Vafni,
which is the main port of Mount Athos, and we're
mixed in with monks, man even a small child, but
only man here, as this peninsula is only open to
(24:43):
the male sex.
Speaker 7 (24:44):
It's damp and windy, but we're excited because our last
stop is one of the holiest and most secluded places
in the world. We're here to visit Mount Athos, a
peninsula in northeastern Greece. According to legend, the Virgin Mary
came here and was so armed by the region's beauty,
by its towering cliffs and lush forests, that God granted
(25:05):
it as her dominion. Orthodox monks established a monastery and
decided that no other woman would ever step foot here again.
Athos has been a men's only retreat ever since. About
two thousand monks live here in twenty small monasteries. They
spend six hours each day in church, spending their free
time beeking, in, gardening, and praying. Unlike Exadhya and Nikaria,
(25:30):
this is not an anarchist stronghold. The Eastern Orthodox Church
is an establishment to be reckoned with in Greece, but
this patch of land is politically unique. For more than
a thousand years it has been functionally independent. Allegedly, that
independence has called criminals here, some to repent, others to hide.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
We heard that a group of robbers came here once
and tried to steal from two elderly hermits who lived
in the mountain that after they broke into the house,
the crooks were immediately paralyzed by the Holy Spirit, so
they repented, and as soon as they regained control of
their bodies, they decided to stay and become hermits themselves.
More recently, one of Vasilis Peleocostas's prison bodies, a cop
(26:14):
killer known as the Beast of the Balkans, claimed that
when he gets out of jail, he'll join the monks
on Athos too, but not everybody sees the light. In
twenty fourteen, a Greek civil servant convicted of embezzling nine
million euros from taxpayers fled to Athos and disguised himself
as a mind. Since then, the tabloid press has turned
(26:37):
these kinds of stories into their own genre, painting Athos
as a place where criminals and shady oligarchs come to hide.
It takes time to get permission to visit Athos. You
need a special entry permit and the blessing from the
monks themselves. Luckily, we had contacts at two monasteries, and
the monks made sure our paperwork was organized.
Speaker 9 (26:57):
So you've just come round the corner.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
We bought a bus that takes us up a winding
road up to the monastery.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
It's a tower hanging over the sea with a huge
mountain amount Athos, draped in snow, looming behind it.
Speaker 7 (27:15):
The bus stops and we get out at the monastery
of Simonopetra. It's a hulking building carved into the side
of a cliff. It reminds me of something out of
Grim's fairy tales. The monks here were black cassocks and long,
wispy beards. Many have simple crucifixes dangling from their necks.
We get a tour and from a point high above
the sea, they ring the church bells for us. So
(27:46):
the first night we tried to speak to some people,
but none of the monks wanted to talk to us.
It was cold. We got up early for church. I mean,
Athos is, for all intents and purposes, a big trick.
It's a complex of monasteries that attracts pilgrims. So if
you're going to Athos, you're going to church. I think
(28:06):
we arrived at midday and started our day off with church.
Then we took a bit of a break, went on
a beautiful walk into the vineyards and the farms and
the fields below the monastery, and then ran back up
as soon as the bells started ringing to go right
back to church. And after church we went to a
dinner where more psalms were kind of red as we
(28:28):
ate and felt like church. And from there we were
hurried to our room, which was actually really beautiful, but
we were instructed to sleep quickly in order to be
able to wake up at three am. For you guessed it,
more church. It was on last day, and we were
incredibly disappointed. We'd spent two days asking people whether they
(28:50):
wanted to speak to us, and nobody would speak to us.
Then the most amazing thing happened. I found out that
a hermit that I'd met a couple of years ago
had ridden a muse all downside of the mountain and
he was willing to help me out. They asked us
not to include their names or the exact monastery they're
affiliated with.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
If somebody was running from the law, would they come here,
do you think or not?
Speaker 9 (29:15):
There's many stories, there's many instances, and there's a tradition
of thieves repenting in the Greek Orthodox Church. However, there's
as many examples of thieves coming amound Athos hiding, but
then being introduced to the way of Jesus, repenting and
(29:37):
ultimately becoming monks. Because everyone here has come with sin.
Everyone here has come with something that they need or
they can repent. This place is welcoming to anyone if
they are willing to kind of change their lives.
Speaker 7 (29:56):
This monk sees things from more cosmic perspective, doesn't differentiate
between palucosas or myself. The legal definition of criminal has
very little meaning here because everybody is a sinner, everyone
has something to repent. But it is Athos's unique political
status that makes it so attractive for people avoiding the law.
Speaker 9 (30:18):
If you feel comfortable to explain what Athos is, at
least in English, I think that would be very helpful
so that we don't lose any information or tone in
the translation because you're speak English very well.
Speaker 11 (30:29):
Mount Athos is in territory into the land of Greece, independence,
independent of the law of Greece. We have constitution, we
have a government. But here we have is something more important.
We have the ghostpel of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 7 (30:49):
Athos was declared autonomous thousands of years ago during Byzantine times.
As far as monks are concerned Byzantium is still alive.
They casually name drop ancient mp for it's like everybody
knows who they are. Athos certainly resists change from the outside.
But is it a place for somebody like Vasilissas?
Speaker 4 (31:08):
I just wanted to ask you whether people come to
hide on Mount Athos?
Speaker 9 (31:11):
Is a place to hide?
Speaker 4 (31:13):
If somebody was running from the law, would they come here,
do you think or not?
Speaker 11 (31:17):
I think that this is a place here that can
only give the chance to these people to confess their
sins and to find the right way to go to God,
if they are criminal or not.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
So if somebody were to come here as a criminal,
they'd be encouraged to confess their sense.
Speaker 11 (31:40):
Yes, of course all of us were criminal, of course.
Speaker 9 (31:46):
But in a spiritual sense, of course?
Speaker 11 (31:48):
Who knows?
Speaker 7 (32:00):
Chapter four, School in the Shadows. We spent a lot
of time planning our trip and setting up interviews, but
it turned out the thing that stuck with me the
most happened by accident. On our way to Athos. We
(32:20):
had an overnight layover in the northern city of Thessaloniki.
It's a beautiful town of white buildings and universities, small
enough to feel personal and large enough to have everything
a modern urban night might want. Costas and I were
walking around where we found a beautiful nineteenth century building
with an anarchist flag flying above it. There was a
guy brewing beer in the garden, and he seemed happy
(32:42):
to chat.
Speaker 9 (32:43):
So, what's your name?
Speaker 13 (32:45):
My name is Zaraka. Zaraka means the vaga pond. It's
a spirit or name because I'm working on a path
of meditation and yoga.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
Saraka is forty seven years old. At least his body is.
He said, in his heart he's twelve, and in his
spirit maybe three hundred and fifty. He invites us inside
for a tour and explains that the building is an
abandoned school. When the state gave up on it, a
group of anarchists turned it into a community education center.
(33:18):
All the services here are free.
Speaker 13 (33:20):
We're having Greek lessons for the references.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
We walk upstairs and we find a young woman giving
Greek language classes to a refugee from North Africa. Refugees
in Greece today are people who really have to live
outside of the law. There are people who have to
hire and who have to come to places like this
because assistance to integrate them into European society are almost
entirely broken.
Speaker 14 (33:45):
So this school is basically here because of the failure
of the state to provide.
Speaker 13 (33:52):
Because the state doesn't want the people, it doesn't want
the humans. It's humanoids, humanoids, humanoid created by the priests,
the politicians. So after all this repression, some people escape.
So these people came together and connect their knowledge, their love,
(34:18):
and slowly, slowly we created this kind of place.
Speaker 7 (34:22):
Saraka used that term humanoids a lot. He told us
that society has brainwashed the masses into giving up their freedoms,
and this place is for the select view who resist
in a way. That's really what we've been exploring. This
thing we've seen all over Greece, the desire to escape
the idea of a state. Not just political excilece, but
(34:42):
people who choose to live out of bounds in a
way that's self sustaining and solidarity with others. And of
course Vasilis Paliucostas, who's both a thief and a symbol
of this phenomenon. So I asked Saraka, why do you
think this is so prevalent in Greek society.
Speaker 13 (34:57):
Our heart is still burning. They didn't make it like
a stone like in every other country.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
I found that on so just uestly beautiful. The idea
that in this country there's something special. Greece's heart is
still bunning.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
We sent Nick and Costas to these far flung places
because we wanted to understand why Greece is such an
incubator for people like Vasilis Palio Costas, and after hearing
about Nick and Costas's adventures, I keep coming back to
this idea of the social bandit, the idea that a
criminal can both break the laws of the state but
(35:44):
still live by a higher law.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I think that's the appeal of Vasilis. He's not just
an outlaw.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
He's an outlaw with a point, a point that resonates
because he knows you can't break a career up system
by playing by its rules. And that's why wherever Vasilis
is hiding, he's doing it with the help of friends, friends,
in places where people are cheering for him, protecting him,
(36:13):
praying for him. If we're going to track him down,
we need to find more of those people. Next time,
on the Good Thief, George and Christina are back and
they stumble into a lead.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
They never expected.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
That's the Good Thief is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
With iHeart Podcasts. I'm Miles Ray.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Our executive producers are Mangesh Hatikadur Costas, Linos, Oz Wallashan
and Kate Osborne. From iHeart, executive producers are Katrina Norvel
and Nikki Itto. This episode was produced, reported, and hosted
by Nick Miarcos. Our sound engineers in Greece were Alexis
Kucias Pantalis and Dimitris Repus. Our partners at the Greek
(37:10):
Podcast Project. Our executive producer Daphney Carniss, Field producers Christina
Pilioni and George Miadis, and sound designer Nico Sclavnitis. Mary
Phillips Sandy is our supervising producer. Shane McKeon is our producer.
The show is written and researched by Lucas riland fact
checking by Donia Suleman. Initial edit, mix and sound design
(37:33):
for this episode was by Kieran Matthew Bannerci at Palm
Tree Island. Sound designed and final mix by Pran Banning.
Our theme song is by Imam Baldi with additional music
by Boden. Finally, thanks to will Pearson, Connell Byrne, Bob Pittman,
and John Marinapolis,
So if there's anything I've learned from this crazy story,
it's that it's one thing to catch the thief, but
it's another to understand one. Because everything Vasilis Paliocostas does,
it's drama. Okay, He's holding up banks with Kalisa Covs,
he's leading police on dukes of hazard style chases, escaping
jails by helicopter, abducting millionaires, and somehow he's winning praise
(00:40):
while doing it. And that's actually the part. I can't
get over the praise. By now, We've interviewed almost what
like fifty people for this podcast, and the praise is
something we keep hearing no matter where we go or
like who we talk to, from city folks in Athens
to police officers on the hunt, to even Alexander Hayte,
(01:00):
the man he kidnapped.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Frankly, it got us all wondering.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Is Vasili's just that good? Is his charm that irresistible?
I mean, why are there so many sympathizers or is
there just something about Greece that makes people all over
the country.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Just want to cheer for outlaws.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So in one of our favorite investigative reporters offered to
help us out. We obviously couldn't pass it up, so
we sent him on a rambling adventure from the den
of anarchists with this have.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Been a place of tany of Prussos who come and
to hang out or not really from what we was
got today to.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
A holy mountain rumored to hide bad guys.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
If somebody was running from the little would they come ahead?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Do you think Honda, in search of clues for our
modern Robin.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Hood, just said that he had a client many years ago,
and apparently it was by those questions.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I'm Miles Gray for iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope. This is
the Good Thing, Chapter one, Sympathy for the Devil. Greece
(02:31):
is a country of contradictions. On one hand, it's super old,
you know, after all, it is the cradle of democracy,
and at the same time it's super young. I mean,
the modern state isn't even two centuries old. Also, Greece
is technically part of Europe, but culturally it's more similar
to the Balkan states. So everywhere you turn there's a
(02:54):
lot of push and pull, and that has made Greece
a very difficult place for a government to unify what
works in one region doesn't always work in another so
Greece has kind of become a Petri dish of descent.
I mean, the country claims to be the birthplace of anarchism,
and it's home to anarchist communes and autonomous neighborhoods. There
(03:17):
are even entire islands that thumb their nose at the state.
These are the kinds of places where people don't just
cheer for Vasilis Paliocostas, they agree with him. One day
we got chatting about all of this with our friend
Nick Nachos. He's an investigative reporter, a Greek, albeit one
who grew up abroad, and it turns out he's been
(03:40):
obsessed with the Vasilis Palocostas story for years. He thought
that to understand Paliocostas, we needed to understand Greece, and
not the picture postcard version with the white buildings and
the beautiful.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Ocean, but some of its most remote corners.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
And lucky for us, Nick has contacts all over the
country and he specializes in exploring the many corners of
the globe. Like when we first made contact, he was
reporting in Democratic Republic of the Congo. Then he was
in a nickel mine in Indonesia, and then the next
time we pick up the phone, he's in Yemen. So
while George and Christina are hunting down leeds in Tricola,
(04:19):
we sent Nick and our producer cost Us to Athens
with the mission to explore some of the remotest parts
of Greece in search of outlaws and outcasts and hopes
that though find what makes Palio Costa so alluring. So
for this episode, I'm throwing it over to Nick and
Costas and letting them tell the rest of the story.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
So we just come into Exarchia.
Speaker 7 (04:49):
I'm starting out in Athens, and right next to the
bars and cafes where Greece's most powerful people gather in
central Athens, there's a place where the shadow of Vasilis
Paliocosa salooms large, a community called exad Here. So Cossus
and I decided to go there.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
You understand that you're coming into exad Here when you
see the police trucks on the side.
Speaker 8 (05:11):
Of the street.
Speaker 9 (05:12):
Yes, so those are riot policemans.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
You have stories of friends who visited Athens for the
summer and took eb and B's and Exa here and
ended up you know, being tag asked, which is always
a good part of the holiday.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
I guess.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Exarkia has been at the center of Greece's anti establishment
movement since the seventies. In fact, it's one of the
oldest anarchist neighborhoods in all of Europe. We're here because
we're hoping this place can give us some insight into
the culture that turned Vasilis into a folk hero. We
park and start our walk through the neighborhood, hoping this
(05:47):
place can give us insight into the culture that turned
Vasilis into a folk hero. One of the first things
we notice is that there's graffiti everywhere. There are signs
for collectives and communist bookstores, anarchist slogans and posters plastered
down alleyways.
Speaker 7 (06:04):
All cops are bussing or its go home. I still
fucking hate the nationalist ideas give birth to graveyards. The
various politics are, to say the least in your face.
Speaker 6 (06:15):
We're trying to find this cafe that we lant about
from one of our sources.
Speaker 8 (06:21):
So so Celes Cafe is the anarchist stronghold within the
anergist stronghold.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
But when you google it on Yelp, the reviews are
all one star because apparently it's monitored by the security services,
that it's full of cops.
Speaker 7 (06:37):
The people running this place are friendly, but they do
not want us recording. That're afraid our microphones might pick
up conversations the regulars are having, so we turn off
our mics. We order beers, and we chat and people
tell us about the neighborhood, how it's changed, and it's true,
just ten or fifteen years ago, visitors would be worn
(06:59):
to avoid exad here. But what everyone really wants to
talk about is how the state wants to gentrify Exadia
out of existence. In twenty nineteen, after the new center
right government came in, things started to change and people
started feeling that, in fact, this gentrification was a political
(07:19):
tool to get rid of the anti government activity.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
But as we sat there, it was hard for me
to see the cafe as a threat. It's just a
place to have a beer and some strong espresso, and
yet the ideas that get shared in a space like
this have made it a place authorities fear. So I
just went to the bathroom and there was a very
telling slogan scribbled on the wall. It read, if you
want robbers make banks and if you want criminals make laws. Frankly,
(07:47):
it sounds exactly like something Vasilies would say. Actually, it
is something he says in his book. He says democracy
needs enemies to sustain itself, and it invents them by
inventing crime.
Speaker 9 (08:04):
Do you want to go in, like.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
If you want to be the parking Okay, let's go.
Speaker 9 (08:13):
We just have time to.
Speaker 7 (08:16):
Eventually we leave the cafe and head towards Exactia's main square.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
A lot of riot police and what is it?
Speaker 8 (08:24):
It's a Tuesday night.
Speaker 9 (08:25):
There's no there's nothing happening.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
Yeah, because there are noise, there's no no one on
the street.
Speaker 9 (08:30):
There's more crops than there are citizens.
Speaker 7 (08:33):
There's been visible tension here for a while now, and
it goes beyond anger over development. Back in December two
thousand and eight, a police officer killed a fifteen year
old kid named Alexandroskirigoropolos, who was hanging out with his
friends in the neighborhood. Within ours, demonstrators filled the streets
(08:57):
of Exadia and violence escalated quickly. Crowds through rocks, fireworks,
hugged molotov cocktails at police cars. As news spread to
other Greek cities. Protests and riots followed. Mass demonstrations has
led to mass arrests, arseness, lit up banks, police fired
tear gas, anarchists deathonated firebombs, and swat teams were called.
(09:21):
In what began as a reaction to a teenager's murder
grew into an expression of more widespread anger at police brutality,
at Greece's political elite, at the financial tsunami slowly consuming
the country. Frankly, the kinds of things that would make
Vasilis Palocosta say, I told you so. Our sound guy Alexis,
(09:43):
who has more than a bit of sympathy for anarchists,
remembers when police had flooded exactly here.
Speaker 9 (09:49):
Up until three years ago, you didn't really have police here,
A lot of undercover police, but not really police in uniform.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
And now it feels sort of more like under occupation exact.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Yeah, certainly, if peace under occupation doesn't feel it is underratuation.
Speaker 7 (10:10):
Clearly things are different now. But before there were cops
on every corner, and before he became the most wanted
man in the country. I have to wonder if Fasilis
Paliucostas would have felt at home here.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
Would this have been a place that Palocostus would come
and hang out.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
I'd be surprised if he'd never been here before. I'd
very very surprised if he wasn't intimately familiar with these
streets or with the people who live here. I mean,
this is the hotbed of the ideology and the culture
that celebrates by low Costas.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Not everyone in Greece celebrates by Loo Costas. There's definitely
some animosity towards him from both politicians and cops. What's
really interesting is that there's this shared understanding of why
Greek people are so sympathetic towards this culture of rebellion.
Before we started on our tour of the country's nooks
and crannies looking for Greek dissidents, before we even came
(11:07):
to excite here, we reached out to some of the
most powerful people we could think of, and surprisingly, a
former foreign deputy Minister, Marcus Boulleries and the former Prime
Minister of Greeks, George Papandreau, both sat down to talk.
Speaker 10 (11:21):
With us and let's say, would you like something doing.
Speaker 7 (11:28):
When pap Andreu approached us, I was surprised at how
tall he was. He's got an impressive mustache and his
vibe is professorial.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
Yeah, let's start with this big question, why the goold
pay for?
Speaker 9 (11:42):
Why does this exist?
Speaker 10 (11:44):
There has been a culture in Greece of you know,
people who have stood up to authority, people who are
loan you know fighters or resistance fighters. So this is
part of the part of the Greek history and tradition
and culture to somehow resisting the higher power, resisting authoritarianism,
(12:12):
resisting a dictatorship occupation.
Speaker 7 (12:17):
This was a point we actually heard from multiple people
that Greeks, because of their history with occupation with the
Ottomans and the Hunda, are by default defiant. Of course,
Greece has a history, a very recent history at that
of government officials abusing power for personal gain. In twenty fifteen,
the government's top anti corruption watchdog reported that almost every
(12:40):
contract between the government and private corporations involved kickbacks. The
company Siemens in particular, had budgeted ten to fifteen million
dollars every year just to bribe Greek officials. To say
the least, this has compelled people to take a skeptical
view of the government and large corporations make for.
Speaker 10 (12:59):
These complex financial systems, banks and so on, have made
people feel not so much controlled. One of the reactions
is to look for an authoritarian figure, or maybe a savior.
A savior could be a robin Hood. You put your
hope in this robin hood.
Speaker 7 (13:15):
It's human nature in times of crisis to look for help,
and a robin Hood figure feeds that need. But Valerius
told us it's never pure charity. Robin Hood always wants
something in return.
Speaker 5 (13:29):
So even under automan occupation, when the thieves would come
down to rub from the Turks, they didn't keep it
from themselves.
Speaker 9 (13:35):
They would give it to the other villagers. It's an
ancient logic, it's not a new one. By redistributing you
you create friends, you create allies, and you find hideouts immediately.
So it's also a practical thing.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Balerie's words were spinning through my mind as we Twurdic
start here. I just kept thinking, who's Balocost has given
money to? Was it a strategic way to find new
friends and new hideouts? And as I looked at the
people walking by, I wondered, who here is keeping his secrets.
Speaker 7 (14:09):
We keep walking and past the intersection where Kirigoropolos was murdered.
There's a memorial there now, and directly across from it,
a swanky real estate development is under construction. And then
we see a music store. It's a plain and simple
looking place, no warning, no sign outside, but just a
large glass window that has been caked over with years
(14:32):
of grime. This shop makes and sells buzuki. That's the
type of Greek loot that you've definitely heard before in
the theme song for this show, for instance.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And there are buzukis everywhere on the walls, hanging from
the ceiling. The air is steeped in this beautiful smell
of fresh wood, and we begin chatting with a little
shop owner, an old timer who has been here for decades.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Do you think Palocrossus ever came to this neighborhood?
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Od siple gun shoulders? He said, Well, he was an
alley cat that goes everywhere, so he must have been
here as well. But also there was a knowing pause
when I asked her, do you think mister bel Costas
came by excited here?
Speaker 2 (15:12):
He said, do I think?
Speaker 9 (15:14):
As though you were suggesting that you know?
Speaker 7 (15:16):
And then, just as we're about to leave, the guy
starts telling us a story about a delivery he made
to an unusual customer.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
Just said that he had a client many years ago
who was renting a house to someone for whom money
was no object and who would always pay rent on time.
Speaker 9 (15:36):
So he delivered the buzuki to this house.
Speaker 5 (15:39):
To this house in the outskirts of Athens, and apparently
it was Balo Costas.
Speaker 7 (15:47):
To be clear, we have no way of fact checking this,
but what is true is that apparently you can walk
into a random buzuki shop in exat here and meet
someone with a first hand story about Basilis Palio Costas.
As we return to the streets, I can't help but
see traces of Vasilis everywhere, traces of his beliefs, his
(16:10):
antagonism toward police. It's literally written on the walls.
Speaker 6 (16:34):
So we're just coming down through the cloud cover towards
the career. Wow, look at it, it's incredible.
Speaker 8 (16:48):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (16:49):
Chapter two and of Exiles. We're in a small twin
prop plane just thirty miles off the coast of Turkey.
Below us, the a GMC is rough and choppy. Our
plane banks right and out of the window we can
see our destination. And then over here on the left
(17:10):
is that there's a hole in a rock, and that's
supposedly where Akras fell to. Karia is named for Icarus,
who you might recall from the folk tale, died after
flying too close to the sun. It's a bit ironic too.
In the story of Icarus, he flew here because he
was trying to escape political persecutions, which, as you'll see,
(17:30):
is a theme in these parts.
Speaker 11 (17:32):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Ikaria.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Please keep your signal fast.
Speaker 12 (17:35):
And up feel the single stop before leaving.
Speaker 7 (17:40):
Like Zaria, Ikaria is an enclave for anarchists, communists, and
other political dissonance, but the similarities end there. Ikarias olive
trees and hot springs. It's self sufficient, it's distant, and
it resists authority by staying far away from that's because
(18:02):
for a long time the Islanders were outlaws themselves. After
the Ottomans claimed KaiA as part of their empire in
fifteen twenty one, the Islanders faked the destruction of their
towns and retreated to the mountains, building houses with no
chimneys to avoid the tailtale signs of smoke. For over
one hundred and fifty years, the Islanders adopted a tactic
(18:23):
of invisibility and almost everyone thought the island was empty.
It's retained that independent street ever since.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
This is our.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
Our deep now. Well, there's four of us, four suitcases
audio equipment, trying to squeeze into Nissan Nika, which is
a very very small car.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Almost immediately we get a tip from some locals that
there might be a name the celebration, a party at
a restaurant nearby. So we drove down this desolate road
and actually missed it a couple of times, but we
finally spot the taverna stop outside and decide to head
in to speak to some people.
Speaker 7 (19:07):
In the taverna. We meet an American expat who's more
than happy to tell us about the charms of island life.
Speaker 9 (19:12):
But here is like.
Speaker 12 (19:16):
The clocks don't work. There is no time for anything,
and it goes on and on and on and on.
Back in the day, all these old people that they
lived to be one hundred and plush, you know, they
slipped all pretty much whenever they felt like it, and
they had no stress. They they had no bills.
Speaker 7 (19:38):
A few years ago, the New York Times magazine called
Ikaria the island where people forget to die. And it's true.
The island is a so called blue zone, one of
five places in the world where people just seem to
live forever. Studies suggest that the reasons for this longevity
are simple. People eat from their own gardens, they socialize
(20:00):
a lot, They rest when they need it, They don't
work too hard, They live simply.
Speaker 12 (20:06):
Most of these people here, they are I would say socialist.
I would say ninety percent of us of them are socialist.
It's how it's been for many, many years, and I
don't see it changed.
Speaker 5 (20:20):
In any time soon.
Speaker 12 (20:22):
And if I know somebody has a lot of money,
he's not a good person.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
Hikaria is one of the most left wing parts of Greece.
In the nineteen forties, during the Greek Civil War, the
government arrested leftists and deported them to the islands. It
was a policy they called administrative banishment. About thirteen thousand
people connected to the Communist Party were exiled to take
the carrier. And when these communists arrived, they stumbled upon
(20:52):
an old world society that was essentially already living their values.
But there is a dark side here. It's isolation and
anti state politics didn't just appeal to exiles and misfits,
it also gained a reputation as a place for bad
guys to hie. After the Pravadna, we hit the road again,
(21:16):
and I'm thinking about something A source told us about
Vasili's pale cost us that the only way he has
stayed hidden for so long is if the whole community
is willing to keep his existence a secret.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
That smells our cladge to be.
Speaker 9 (21:44):
We're also definitely lost.
Speaker 8 (21:46):
No we're not, believe we're not.
Speaker 13 (21:50):
Wait wait, wait, we are.
Speaker 9 (21:53):
We are loves the wrong way.
Speaker 7 (21:57):
We eventually find our bearings and stop at a few places.
We learned that in town has its own cooperative community,
and that there are self organizing neighborhoods everywhere. Some places
pay using an honor or a barter system.
Speaker 8 (22:11):
So everyone who who we've asked do you think vasilis
is here? Do you think he could be here, or
do you think he was here? Has been pretty doubtful.
But at the same time, and I mentioned this earlier today,
no one has laughed us out, no one has said
(22:32):
you're silly, But there's almost.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
A a sort of sense of pride.
Speaker 14 (22:39):
They think, well, he could come here in a way.
Speaker 7 (22:49):
The next day, when we sat down with the journalist
Jord Goswutzadas. We asked him if there was any chance
that you Carria could still be a place for someone
who might want to self excellent.
Speaker 15 (23:02):
My grand grand grandfather he cames from visage because it
was against the system, and he came here to hire himself. Okay,
it was very difficult to find him. Today, it's not
They can find you very easy, very so you can
hire here.
Speaker 7 (23:21):
People we spoke to agree that this isn't a good
place to hide these days. And perhaps it's because, like
exaia I, Carrier is changing. If Vacilis is in Greece,
it's not just a place that embraces his ideology or
a place with a strong sense of community, but a
place that has also resisted change. So our next stop
(23:41):
is one of those places, a place where time has
stopped and where outlaws are rumored to walk free. Chapter three,
(24:10):
The Holy Mountain.
Speaker 14 (24:18):
So we're just arriving here at the small port of Vafni,
which is the main port of Mount Athos, and we're
mixed in with monks, man even a small child, but
only man here, as this peninsula is only open to
(24:43):
the male sex.
Speaker 7 (24:44):
It's damp and windy, but we're excited because our last
stop is one of the holiest and most secluded places
in the world. We're here to visit Mount Athos, a
peninsula in northeastern Greece. According to legend, the Virgin Mary
came here and was so armed by the region's beauty,
by its towering cliffs and lush forests, that God granted
(25:05):
it as her dominion. Orthodox monks established a monastery and
decided that no other woman would ever step foot here again.
Athos has been a men's only retreat ever since. About
two thousand monks live here in twenty small monasteries. They
spend six hours each day in church, spending their free
time beeking, in, gardening, and praying. Unlike Exadhya and Nikaria,
(25:30):
this is not an anarchist stronghold. The Eastern Orthodox Church
is an establishment to be reckoned with in Greece, but
this patch of land is politically unique. For more than
a thousand years it has been functionally independent. Allegedly, that
independence has called criminals here, some to repent, others to hide.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
We heard that a group of robbers came here once
and tried to steal from two elderly hermits who lived
in the mountain that after they broke into the house,
the crooks were immediately paralyzed by the Holy Spirit, so
they repented, and as soon as they regained control of
their bodies, they decided to stay and become hermits themselves.
More recently, one of Vasilis Peleocostas's prison bodies, a cop
(26:14):
killer known as the Beast of the Balkans, claimed that
when he gets out of jail, he'll join the monks
on Athos too, but not everybody sees the light. In
twenty fourteen, a Greek civil servant convicted of embezzling nine
million euros from taxpayers fled to Athos and disguised himself
as a mind. Since then, the tabloid press has turned
(26:37):
these kinds of stories into their own genre, painting Athos
as a place where criminals and shady oligarchs come to hide.
It takes time to get permission to visit Athos. You
need a special entry permit and the blessing from the
monks themselves. Luckily, we had contacts at two monasteries, and
the monks made sure our paperwork was organized.
Speaker 9 (26:57):
So you've just come round the corner.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
We bought a bus that takes us up a winding
road up to the monastery.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
It's a tower hanging over the sea with a huge
mountain amount Athos, draped in snow, looming behind it.
Speaker 7 (27:15):
The bus stops and we get out at the monastery
of Simonopetra. It's a hulking building carved into the side
of a cliff. It reminds me of something out of
Grim's fairy tales. The monks here were black cassocks and long,
wispy beards. Many have simple crucifixes dangling from their necks.
We get a tour and from a point high above
the sea, they ring the church bells for us. So
(27:46):
the first night we tried to speak to some people,
but none of the monks wanted to talk to us.
It was cold. We got up early for church. I mean,
Athos is, for all intents and purposes, a big trick.
It's a complex of monasteries that attracts pilgrims. So if
you're going to Athos, you're going to church. I think
(28:06):
we arrived at midday and started our day off with church.
Then we took a bit of a break, went on
a beautiful walk into the vineyards and the farms and
the fields below the monastery, and then ran back up
as soon as the bells started ringing to go right
back to church. And after church we went to a
dinner where more psalms were kind of red as we
(28:28):
ate and felt like church. And from there we were
hurried to our room, which was actually really beautiful, but
we were instructed to sleep quickly in order to be
able to wake up at three am. For you guessed it,
more church. It was on last day, and we were
incredibly disappointed. We'd spent two days asking people whether they
(28:50):
wanted to speak to us, and nobody would speak to us.
Then the most amazing thing happened. I found out that
a hermit that I'd met a couple of years ago
had ridden a muse all downside of the mountain and
he was willing to help me out. They asked us
not to include their names or the exact monastery they're
affiliated with.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
If somebody was running from the law, would they come here,
do you think or not?
Speaker 9 (29:15):
There's many stories, there's many instances, and there's a tradition
of thieves repenting in the Greek Orthodox Church. However, there's
as many examples of thieves coming amound Athos hiding, but
then being introduced to the way of Jesus, repenting and
(29:37):
ultimately becoming monks. Because everyone here has come with sin.
Everyone here has come with something that they need or
they can repent. This place is welcoming to anyone if
they are willing to kind of change their lives.
Speaker 7 (29:56):
This monk sees things from more cosmic perspective, doesn't differentiate
between palucosas or myself. The legal definition of criminal has
very little meaning here because everybody is a sinner, everyone
has something to repent. But it is Athos's unique political
status that makes it so attractive for people avoiding the law.
Speaker 9 (30:18):
If you feel comfortable to explain what Athos is, at
least in English, I think that would be very helpful
so that we don't lose any information or tone in
the translation because you're speak English very well.
Speaker 11 (30:29):
Mount Athos is in territory into the land of Greece, independence,
independent of the law of Greece. We have constitution, we
have a government. But here we have is something more important.
We have the ghostpel of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 7 (30:49):
Athos was declared autonomous thousands of years ago during Byzantine times.
As far as monks are concerned Byzantium is still alive.
They casually name drop ancient mp for it's like everybody
knows who they are. Athos certainly resists change from the outside.
But is it a place for somebody like Vasilissas?
Speaker 4 (31:08):
I just wanted to ask you whether people come to
hide on Mount Athos?
Speaker 9 (31:11):
Is a place to hide?
Speaker 4 (31:13):
If somebody was running from the law, would they come here,
do you think or not?
Speaker 11 (31:17):
I think that this is a place here that can
only give the chance to these people to confess their
sins and to find the right way to go to God,
if they are criminal or not.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
So if somebody were to come here as a criminal,
they'd be encouraged to confess their sense.
Speaker 11 (31:40):
Yes, of course all of us were criminal, of course.
Speaker 9 (31:46):
But in a spiritual sense, of course?
Speaker 11 (31:48):
Who knows?
Speaker 7 (32:00):
Chapter four, School in the Shadows. We spent a lot
of time planning our trip and setting up interviews, but
it turned out the thing that stuck with me the
most happened by accident. On our way to Athos. We
(32:20):
had an overnight layover in the northern city of Thessaloniki.
It's a beautiful town of white buildings and universities, small
enough to feel personal and large enough to have everything
a modern urban night might want. Costas and I were
walking around where we found a beautiful nineteenth century building
with an anarchist flag flying above it. There was a
guy brewing beer in the garden, and he seemed happy
(32:42):
to chat.
Speaker 9 (32:43):
So, what's your name?
Speaker 13 (32:45):
My name is Zaraka. Zaraka means the vaga pond. It's
a spirit or name because I'm working on a path
of meditation and yoga.
Speaker 7 (32:54):
Saraka is forty seven years old. At least his body is.
He said, in his heart he's twelve, and in his
spirit maybe three hundred and fifty. He invites us inside
for a tour and explains that the building is an
abandoned school. When the state gave up on it, a
group of anarchists turned it into a community education center.
(33:18):
All the services here are free.
Speaker 13 (33:20):
We're having Greek lessons for the references.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
We walk upstairs and we find a young woman giving
Greek language classes to a refugee from North Africa. Refugees
in Greece today are people who really have to live
outside of the law. There are people who have to
hire and who have to come to places like this
because assistance to integrate them into European society are almost
entirely broken.
Speaker 14 (33:45):
So this school is basically here because of the failure
of the state to provide.
Speaker 13 (33:52):
Because the state doesn't want the people, it doesn't want
the humans. It's humanoids, humanoids, humanoid created by the priests,
the politicians. So after all this repression, some people escape.
So these people came together and connect their knowledge, their love,
(34:18):
and slowly, slowly we created this kind of place.
Speaker 7 (34:22):
Saraka used that term humanoids a lot. He told us
that society has brainwashed the masses into giving up their freedoms,
and this place is for the select view who resist
in a way. That's really what we've been exploring. This
thing we've seen all over Greece, the desire to escape
the idea of a state. Not just political excilece, but
(34:42):
people who choose to live out of bounds in a
way that's self sustaining and solidarity with others. And of
course Vasilis Paliucostas, who's both a thief and a symbol
of this phenomenon. So I asked Saraka, why do you
think this is so prevalent in Greek society.
Speaker 13 (34:57):
Our heart is still burning. They didn't make it like
a stone like in every other country.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
I found that on so just uestly beautiful. The idea
that in this country there's something special. Greece's heart is
still bunning.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
We sent Nick and Costas to these far flung places
because we wanted to understand why Greece is such an
incubator for people like Vasilis Palio Costas, and after hearing
about Nick and Costas's adventures, I keep coming back to
this idea of the social bandit, the idea that a
criminal can both break the laws of the state but
(35:44):
still live by a higher law.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I think that's the appeal of Vasilis. He's not just
an outlaw.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
He's an outlaw with a point, a point that resonates
because he knows you can't break a career up system
by playing by its rules. And that's why wherever Vasilis
is hiding, he's doing it with the help of friends, friends,
in places where people are cheering for him, protecting him,
(36:13):
praying for him. If we're going to track him down,
we need to find more of those people. Next time,
on the Good Thief, George and Christina are back and
they stumble into a lead.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
They never expected.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
That's the Good Thief is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
With iHeart Podcasts. I'm Miles Ray.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Our executive producers are Mangesh Hatikadur Costas, Linos, Oz Wallashan
and Kate Osborne. From iHeart, executive producers are Katrina Norvel
and Nikki Itto. This episode was produced, reported, and hosted
by Nick Miarcos. Our sound engineers in Greece were Alexis
Kucias Pantalis and Dimitris Repus. Our partners at the Greek
(37:10):
Podcast Project. Our executive producer Daphney Carniss, Field producers Christina
Pilioni and George Miadis, and sound designer Nico Sclavnitis. Mary
Phillips Sandy is our supervising producer. Shane McKeon is our producer.
The show is written and researched by Lucas riland fact
checking by Donia Suleman. Initial edit, mix and sound design
(37:33):
for this episode was by Kieran Matthew Bannerci at Palm
Tree Island. Sound designed and final mix by Pran Banning.
Our theme song is by Imam Baldi with additional music
by Boden. Finally, thanks to will Pearson, Connell Byrne, Bob Pittman,
and John Marinapolis,
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