Jordan Harbinger

I was an exchange student in the former East Germany, and I remember asking, how many people were like, really communists?

My host father was like, I don't know.

We didn't exactly have data on who totally didn't believe in the system.

But a lot of people died driving into the other country or going over a minefield or trying to get over the Berlin Wall or trying to sneak out on a train.

And they dedicated a lot of resources to not letting us do that.

You know, a lot.

Landmines, machine gun nests.

There's a listener to the show.

She'll write me after this.

She told me that she was a kid and she had family in East Germany.

And every time they would go to East Germany on the train and come back,

the border police would pull her aside because she was a kid and go, where are you really from?

And they would ask her to say things and try and see if her dialect would slip into an East German dialect because it's slightly different.

And she wasn't East German, so they always let her out.

But she's like, I remember every time they would pull me aside away from my parents and ask me different questions.

Where are you really from?

How do you say this word?

Read the sentence for me to see if she would slip into an East German dialect.

You don't dedicate that kind of resources when you have a bunch of true believers and it doesn't matter.

It's not a thing.