Reply All - #133 Reply All's 2018 Year End Extravaganza

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

In our final episode of the year, we revisit some stories, talk to old friends, and hear from the most remote places on the planet. For a list of all the episodes we referenced, check out our website reply.soy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is for Pye-all. I'm P.J. Vote. And I'm Alex Goldman. Alex Goldman. PJ Vote. Why are we here? This is our end of the year spectacular extravaganza. Okay.

Which is an episode where we just kind of... We check up on some old stories, but we also give ourselves permission to kind of do whatever we want. Yeah, it's sort of a no-rules kind of situation. It's wacky Wednesday. Wacky Wednesday. What's wacky Wednesday? Harvey brought home a book from the library called Wacky Wednesday, which is written by Dr. Seuss,

but illustrated by someone else for some reason. Okay. And the premise is like, it's this Wednesday where everything goes crazy, but the person who illustrated it has no imagination. So, like, the crazy thing is that, like, there's a shoe on top of a building. That's Wacky Wednesday?

There's a shoe on a building? It's like, or like, there's a baby carriage, but a tree's growing out. out of it. It's like the least wacky stuff you could imagine. It's so... It just sounds like things you would see after a bomb went off in a city. You'd see a tree growing out of a... You'd see like a tree wrapped around a baby. You'd like it would be like impaled on a tree and there'd be a shoe on a house. Not to make it dark, but that's what wacky Wednesday sounds like. Well, you really have made it dark.

Okay, so what else happens on wacky Wednesday? I'm trying to remember what else happens on wacky Wednesday. Dr. Seuss refuses to illustrate his own books. It'll be like, there's like a plane taking off backwards. It's, you mean crashing? Why are you trying to make this so gross? I'm not, I'm just trying to, gross. I'm just trying to understand.

Imagine, imagine a plane going in reverse, but taking off. It goes in the air butt first. Yeah. Imagine a thing going in the air butt first. Okay, so this is kind of, this is our, this is our annual Wacky Wednesday episode. And there's someone here to help us, Repile producer Jessica Young. Hi, guys.

Hi, Jessica. What are you doing here? So today I am going to intro each update that we're going to be doing. Give me an example of what this would sound like. Like, up next episode. What a listener can't see is that when you do that, you point your finger in the air and smile like a toothpaste model.

It's like this huge smile. It reminds you. It reminded me of the people who do the safety instructions on the airplane. Yeah. Well, the other day I was walking down and I was shopping for Christmas gifts. And then I saw this guy outside, like, trying to get people to, like, do $20 tattoos. And he did it with, like, so much enthusiasm and he had his, like, hand in the air that I was like, that's how you do it. Did you get a tattoo?

No, I thought about it, though. People were getting $20 tattoos? And the fact that that worked, you know? It was, like, so, like, I don't know, convincing. So you want to be up here with the persuasive technique of a guy who can sell a $20 tattoo to a stranger on the street? Yes. Okay. So far so good.

So far so good. You want to do one more? Okay. First up. First up, episode 130, the Snapchat thief. So you remember the episode The Snapchat Thief? Yes. In that episode, a listener named Lizzie got in touch with us because her Snapchat account had been stolen.

and her Snapchat account was lizard. She'd, like, gotten that company to give it back, but she was being threatened. Right. At this point, did you think, like, this hacker knew everything about you? Um, I definitely was, like, feeling weird. And I, like, remember, like, maybe two days later,

I, like, go to this yoga studio that's, like, two blocks from my house, and I just remember feeling, like, so nervous, walking back from yoga. Um, So this, like, consumed you. You just felt exposed everywhere. Yeah, and actually I also made my roommate sleep in my bed with me.

And so I started trying to look into who was threatening her and whether she was actually at any risk. And I stumbled in sort of teenage hacker world. Right. And so after doing that story, I was like, oh, I'm very nervous about these hackers who like to steal people's accounts and get their personal info, stealing my accounts and getting my personal info. So what happened? So I immediately did a thing where I hopped in their Discord just to see what they were talking about. If they were mad at you?

If they were mad or if they were like out to get me or whatever. Don't you think maybe they wouldn't discuss it in the Discord? Oh my God, they disgusted so much. So there was like a variety of responses. Do they like the podcast? Some of them did. There was a lot of like, can you believe how cringy it is that a 40-year-old stalked us for two months in our discord, which... They related to me.

Fair enough. There were a couple of people who were legitimately mad. And they were just mad because they felt exposed? Yeah. This person was like, you think we should shut them down? And I was like, oh, that's a little scary. Yeah. And then Maxime, one of the ringleaders of the hacker group I was watching, says, the podcast guy?

No, why would we care? And then Maxime is like, there's legit nothing bad. in the podcast. Like, there's nothing bad about us. Like, why would we go after him? That's really well adjusted. Yeah, I agree. What a weird little cabal. But a couple weeks after the episode came out, I got an email from Michael Bezell. Security expert. Security expert from the episode. Yeah. And he was like, hey, so I just wanted to let you know that your social security number was bought on the internet. And I was like, how could you possibly know that someone bought my social security number. Do you have like an alert on it? So there it's actually

pretty fascinating. There's a website which I'm not going to name here because no one should ever go to it, but it's a place where you can buy social security numbers and personal information about people from various leaks. And and basically the way the site works is all of the social security numbers are hidden and you have to search for names and pay for the name. It can be as cheap as like a dollar 80 to get someone. That's how much is social security costs? Yeah. And once someone buys your social security number, it appears on a public list on that website that anyone can see. Oh, crap.

He has a bot crawling that list for my social security number. And once it became public, that means someone bought it. Not great. Not awesome. And I was thinking, like, what could they do with my social security number? They could take the SATs for you. There's no way they could do worse than I did. But I was thinking like, you know, what can you do with a social security number?

And I was like, they can't start a new line of credit because I've frozen my credit. But they can, if they know my phone number, impersonate me to my phone company. Right. So just to be safe, I told my phone company that no one can transfer a phone on my account unless they go into the store. And I hope that that works. I guess we'll see. Quick PSA, after this episode, a lot of people sent in emails asking what they should do to be more secure online. Here are two easy things you can do.

One, get a password manager like LastPass or Dashlane. Sorry that we say that in every episode, but you really need one. That's why we do it. And two, download an app called Google Authenticator, which is really just a much more secure way to do two-factor authentication than getting a text sent to your phone. Also, just, you know, don't bother hackers. And now, number 127 and number 128, the crime machine. So you remember crime machine was about? Crime Machine was about, it was about a guy named Jack Maple who essentially invented the sort of statistical analysis of crime in New York City.

And then about how his invention, after he passed away, totally became misused as a way to make the, NYPD look a lot better at stopping crime than it was? Yeah, and part of what we were trying to do with the story was actually just understand Jack Maple, like the guy who built this and like what he actually wanted. And so we spent a lot of time listening to these tape recordings of him talking to this journalist named Chris Mitchell. And you could just hear like Jack's weirdo crime brain, like talking about stuff like how the way he figured out where to put detectives in the city was by studying Napoleon's military strategies. Because what did we learn from Napoleon? He didn't think much of the admirals, right? And he got fucked.

It's profound because of that. He didn't use his detectives. Oh, yeah. You really think I'm crazy. You do. You want me to fill out? You're a little surprised about what? So the guy interviewing Jack in those tapes, Chris Mitchell.

He recorded those tapes 20 years ago. Him and Jack actually became friends after that. And he emailed me when the story came out. to say that listening to the tapes again, it brought back a lot of memories for him. It's funny that I have a memory of him being much more saintly than he comes across. Because at his core, he's such a good guy.

Even the, you know, the motherfucking stuff on the tapes was a surprise to me because I, you know, at the time I remember, but 20 years later or whatever, that all disappeared. And he told me this story about, He was like Jack was just really charming and he could like sort of adapt his personality to the people around him in like a good way. And he said there was this one time where they were hanging out at Chris's house. And it was like holiday times.

And we sat in my apartment dining room a little bit and my daughter who was about five came in. And he immediately instead of introducing himself as Jack Maple induced himself as one of Santa's elves. and she completely bought it. And so we finished up our business, and we walk out on Santa Zulf had left his clock on the table. And he called me like three minutes later from the car saying, I left my gun, put it up on a high shelf.

That's perfect. So the reason I was sighted, talk to Chris is because, like, you remember in the piece, it was like, Jack created the system to track crime, and for a while it really worked, and then eventually people started abusing the system, and actually it encouraged cops to not report crimes because they want to get in trouble. And I never knew, like, how aware Jack was before he died that his system had gone off the rails. And Chris had emailed me after the story, and been like, oh, I have the answer to that. I mean, I know in 1998 we were already talking about that issue, that the numbers could be faked

And I mean, I think you can tell from the original piece that Jack was furious about anything that's unfair. So he had a plan that he was putting in place, and I'm not sure how many cities he was able to do it. Essentially, there would be people who would be doing undercover work going and reporting crimes, acting out the idea that a crime had happened. and then that would mean that the people on top would be able to check to see if those crimes showed up. So it was like an audit. Like you would have somebody pretend to be a victim file report and then see what happened in the system? Yeah, exactly.

It was certainly part of his concept of relentless follow-up, that he knew the system couldn't just be put in place, and that would be it. The people running it had to always be trying to make it better. So he knew about the pitfall. and he had a plan, at least, to try to address it. And I just, I liked that it was like, let's have a bunch of fake victims, report fake crimes to catch cops that aren't doing their jobs.

Like, that just felt like a Jack Maple plan. Like the guys who used to come into the gas station I worked at to see if I would card for cigarettes. Exactly like the guys used to come to the gas station that you used to work at to see if you would card for cigarettes. Did you get caught? No, because I always carded for cigarettes. What if somebody looked kind of like an old person?

I always carded for cigarettes because other people I'd worked with had gotten busted. and the deal was that my boss, Mr. Fox, who's a pretty chill dude, love the kinks, love Public Image Limited, cool guy. Uh-huh. He was like, sorry, man, like, this ticket is yours. I'm not going to deal with it.

Can you make the employees pay for the tickets? Well, the tickets are specifically written to the employees because they're the ones who actually commit the cigarette fraud. Cigarette fraud. Wow. And you never fell for it? No, because I just had a blanket always show. me your ID rule.

Did people ever freak out? One guy threw a phone book at me. Well, I worked midnight to eight, and, like, people would show up drunk and be like, I want a pack of camels or whatever. And I'd be like, I need to see your ID. And the person was like, I don't have my ID. Did it hit? Yeah, hit me square in the face.

Pretty funny to picture. Then I did the coolest thing I could think to do, which was dropped down the bulletproof glass and lock the door to the cage I was in and start. swearing at the guy. How'd that go over? I felt really safe. Okay, well, that's my update. Hey, guys.

Hey, Damiano. How's it gone? Good. What are you doing here? So we've reached the portion of the show called Lightning Round. Nice. Do you guys remember Lightning Round? We try to do a lot of updates real fast.

And it's a competition for no reason. Exactly. So normally it's the two of you guys competing against each other. Yeah. This year, though, I want to add someone. I want to add producer Fia Bannon, and she's going to represent, like, the producers of reply all. Meaning what?

Meaning, like, she can give updates on any of the things that the producers worked on. So, like, anything I worked on, anything Shruthy, who's out sick this week, worked on, anything Anna or Jessica. Okay. She can also update whatever she wants. I hate this. I love that. All right. Let me grab her.

Wait. I see, I hear some real host ego. I just don't like this. She can do whatever she wants. All right. Fia Bennon. Hi. Fia Bennon.

She is here with a bottle of whiskey that, like, a pirate would be scared of. It's close to the size of her body. I would like to have a shot before we do this. Okay. Are you just getting pumped? I'm stressed. This is stressful. It makes me anxious.

I think that some whiskey would help. Okay. Maybe that's very unhealthy. Whatever. I wouldn't leave you. Well, I am. I do have a cold. Why would I do this to myself?

I mean, that's what, like, a hot toddy is. A hot toddy is Jameson with a cold. All right, let me get that hot toddy. Pour it directly into my cold diet snap. Are you not going to cheers me? Rude. We're enemies. So rude.

Cheers. Wow, this really makes this taste like cough syrup. You guys are so gross. I don't disagree with you. Do you feel readier? Okay, I feel two things right now. Hammered. I feel very nervous.

But I also think that I could win. Ooh. One of those was a feeling. One was more of a belief. Okay. What's the difference between a feeling and a belief? You don't know the difference between a feeling and a belief? Can we strike that from the record?

Bia, is this your version of like intimidation tactics before the match? Yeah, you're like pro wrestling shit talk is to be like, I feel nervous, but I believe I could think. I have a follow-up question, which is, are we going... What's the difference between a thought and a belief? No, I already... What's the difference between a promise and a wish? I would like to... What's the difference between a question and an answer?

What's the difference between a friend and an enemy? Oh, I know what enemies are. Very familiar with them. Okay. All right, guys. So the rules, before we begin. Yeah. Normally we have a minute for lighting around.

I'm going to add 30 seconds. And we're going to go in a just a clockwise formation. Alex is sitting right in front of me. It's almost like I was just going to say what that meant. Fucking dicks. Oh, my God. All right, we're going to go clockwise, so it's Alex Fia PJ. Also remember that I get to do whatever I want, and you have to listen to me.

Nope, I don't really want to take questions either. Okay. Is everyone ready? Yes. Okay. On your marks. Alex, you're first. Get set.

Go. Okay. So voyage into Pizza Gate, the guy who, one of the people who was the founding people, oh my God, one of the people who is, oh, no. First, ugh. This is like watching someone trip in the Olympics. The person who bought PizzaGate.com, which was used as a repository for all sorts of of PizzaGate conspiracy theories, eventually denounced it and now uses it as a website to denounce

the conspiracy theory. That took 20 seconds. Okay. Susan from the past two updates episode, the woman who is like, yeah, an owl watcher. Her dog, Frankie No Pants, he died this year. No. But she bought a house. Okay.

Good for her. PJ, go. PJ. Who was it? Oh, Sergeant Edwin Raymond from the crime machine episode. He had been up for a lieutenant promotion and it seemed like the department was denying him. He just got it. Alex.

Facebook is still not listening to you, no matter what you think. But there are some information, some documents leaked this year, which show that they were collecting text message and phone numbers. information from people who have Android phones, and they were talking about how creepy it was and chose to do it anyway. So if you're falling behind, you better now. Struthi still orders everything from Amazon, but she heard this horrific report on next day delivery, so she does three to five day delivery instead, and she says she still feels bad about it. Okay, you remember that episode of The Prophet about Mexican elections?

So the PRI, the ruling party, they finally lost an election. Oberdor, the other guy won. Barry Crimmons, the comedian who ended up an... Stop. You're making it much harder. No, he's reflecting reality. You're really bad at this. Should I go? Fia go. Okay. I now have a password manager.

Alex had to sit the whole thing up for me, and he knows my super password and could give everything away. I bought a bunch of Bitcoin after we told people not to buy Bitcoin, and that was crazy to buy Bitcoin. And I lost some money. Matt Logelin from the episode about how his wife was appearing in ads is no longer seeing his wife in ads after they said they would take them down. Callie Burke, the one who was going to launch a rocket to Mars. 10 seconds. Did launch a rocket to Mars. Five seconds.

They still haven't found the phantom caller. Incels are still being really terrible on the internet. Okay, time, time, time. All right, death match. Def match? PJ v. Fia. We get to kill each other out there. Alex?

Wait, what did I do wrong? A lot. Ready, set, go. A councilwoman from an area called San Juan Capistrano in her farewell speech said God bless America, God bless Q, God bless San Juan Capistrano. Wait, so you're talking about like Q and on Q? Yeah. That is creepy.

Logan Paul tased a rat for some reason after having like tearfully apologized for putting bad stuff on the internet. The rat was dead. Alex, you're not in this round. And now he has a podcast. Soapy Soap changed their name to the Mad Optimist. I saw that. 30 seconds of extra time. Keep going.

Time. Barry from Boy Wonder made a, is making a quote book. My dog. Lizzie from Snapchat was on the Biteback podcast after she donated to Biteback the nonprofit. I'm thinking about doing more internet shopping for Christmas stuff. The upper breast side, which is the store on the Upper West Side that people were donating their breast milk to closed. I have nothing. Okay, time.

Wow. Okay. So official standings. Alex Goldman. Yeah, hi. You didn't like, like, there's not going to be a podium

with three spots on it. You know what I mean? And it was much nicer. It's like a year where you just skipped the bronze medal. Yeah, there's just like one step, high step, and then a slower step, and that's it. Cool. So you're watching them get their medals.

PJ? I'd be happy to just get silver here. You did a pretty good job. Thank you. I thought you did build. out of you. You get second place, though, like, clearly. Yeah, yeah, no, I had no illusions here.

Fia Bennon. Yes, Damiano Marquetti. You are this year's 2018, year-end extravaganza, gold medalist. Congratulations. I'm so happy. The underclass. The underclass. Next up, episode 119.

No more safe harbor. Okay, so this episode was about Fasta Sesta. these two laws that basically made it that any website where people sell sex online can get in way more trouble than they used to. And according to people who supported this law, the reason they wanted to pass it was because they were trying to stop pimps,

like sex traffickers, people who are using the internet to force people to sell sex against their will. Like their big target, like the website that they particularly hated, was this website called Backpage, which was basically just like the erotic encounters on Craigslist but turned into its own website. Right. But at the time, we talked to a bunch of sex workers and people who studied sex work.

And what they were saying is, like, this law is going to have really unintended consequences. Like, all these people who have been using the Internet to sell sex and actually protect themselves, a lot of those people were just going to be forced back onto the streets. In the original episode, I talked to this economist named Scott Cunningham, who told me about it. Do you think people are going to die because of this law? Yeah, I do, actually. if they end up having to go back to the streets, if they end up having to work with clients

that they were not able to check out before or screen in any way, they are going to die. There's going to be violence committed. There's going to be violence committed against them. There'll be no more blacklists. There'll be no more white lists. There'll be no references. I mean, it's not even clear what the new market's going to look like,

but I can't imagine that any of the safety infrastructure going to be there. So it's been eight months since we did that story, and I just wanted to see what had actually happened. So I call this person named Pike Long. She works with sex workers in San Francisco. I am the deputy director of St. James Infirmary. We're the first

and only in the nation that I'm aware of, peer-based occupational health and safety clinic for sex workers and their partners. So Pike said just on a neighborhood level in San Francisco, as soon as the law passed, they saw it. Like they saw

more of the people they worked with were in more trouble and needed more help. And she also said the other thing that sex workers and sex worker advocates had predicted, which was that the law would actually empower sex traffickers. She said that they saw that almost immediately too. So for example, somebody who maybe actually had gotten out of an abusive third-party situation, started out having a pimp, or even if it wasn't abusive, but they didn't want a pimp taking a big cut of their money. Once they were able to get online and get their own business off the ground, they were working for themselves and keeping all of it.

Once Faust and Sesta happened, a lot of pimps came back out of the woodwork and were like, hey, you need me now. How else are you going to find clients? How are you going to screen these clients who's going to protect you? Suddenly, these folks needed protection again when they had been doing just fine on their own previously. I guess we knew that this was going to be a thing that like rippled in all these different ways. It's just like interesting hearing all the ways that actually did. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, honey. I didn't even tell you, I was, because I was. I was networking with all these international activists. And what I learned was when Backpage closed, you know, I guess I kind of had this naive like, oh, well, workers in the U.S. are screwed. But no, Backpage was the number one advertising venue for the entire world.

There was like 120 countries where Backpage was the number one platform. It was massive. So what we heard from a lot of people, everywhere from like Malaysia to Australia to Africa, like South Africa especially was there, Uganda was there, like the same thing that we saw happening in the United States has happened ripple effect, like worldwide. The day back page went down, literally, I would say probably millions of people's lives were damaged instantaneously, like their ability to earn a living. The other place this rippled out that sort of surprised me

was that since Fostas Sesta passed, all the big platforms like Facebook, credit, Tumblr, like they have all now gotten so scared about being Fosters. Sesta compliant, that they've shut down, like, huge parts of their websites because they're worried that they could get caught allowing people to sell sex. Like Craigslist lost their personal sections. Tomler just a few weeks ago, they said they were going to basically do a ban on essentially all adult content on their website, which with Tomler, you're just sort of like, oh, what will be left?

Yeah, the entire website. Next up, episode 122, the Q&ON code. So we have a segment on our show called Yes, Yes, Yes, No, in which, our boss, Alex Bloomberg, comes to us with things from the internet he doesn't understand, and we try to explain them to him. And we've had some wild ones this year. So we brought Alex Bloomberg back into the studio. Alex, hello.

We brought you here because there have been a variety of developments from the yes, yes, noes that we have. The yes-as-knows, which became understandable, then more things happen. And while you might think that you're a yes. I got node. The internet returns to its natural state of confusion. Got it. Do you remember Q&ONO, Alex Bloomberg? I do remember Q&ON.

Q&N is a person or persons who have been posting on 4chan and 8chan for the past year. And their posts are super cryptic, but basically what they say is that a lot of very prominent politicians like the Obamas, the Clintons, are engaging in all of this insanely corrupt behavior. And Donald Trump is leading a clandestine campaign to have them all arrested. Right. So I spoke to Will Summer from The Daily Beast, who has done a lot of reporting about QAnon, Far-A conspiracy theories. And I just asked him, like, what has Q been posting and how have his followers been interpreting it? Has anything that Q predicted come true? Well, so a lot of these Q predictions are so incredibly vague.

And so they'll say, you know, like something big is going to happen next week. And then, you know, Mueller will indicts on what or something will happen. And then Q will say, see, I told you. I mean, the latest one I was seeing was Q was predicting a big red wave, you know, in the midterms. And that didn't materialize. But then, you know, there was an earthquake in Alaska. And now people are saying, well, that was the wave, Q was talking about. Wait, I'm sorry.

Wait, he can predict earthquakes, too? Well, you know, so if you get a little into it, you know, there's a lot of accusations that, you know, the deep state controls the weather and can cause earthquakes and stuff like that. And then Will told me about this other thing that some. Q and UnFulks believe, which adds an entire new dimension to this, which is really surprising. Okay. This summer, Q stopped posting for a while, and no one could figure out where he was, or they were. Whoever posts this Q, people were worried that they'd been...

Renditioned. Renditioned, busted by the deep state, whatever. And in their place, someone popped up and started posting similarly cryptic things. Let me read the first post by this person. It says, in 1909, we lost everything. My father caught on first to the Bilderbergs. Then he caught on the NASA. The NASA?

I think it's a typo. He demanded to know who the greys were and why they were here. I assume that means aliens. They killed him. I strategically staged my own death, allied with the one person in this world, whom I knew was honorable enough to trust, and we began building the plan, quote unquote.

It is signed R. The letter after Q. Good work, guys. Whoa. The photo attached to this is a photo of Donald Trump and John F. Kennedy Jr. So they're saying John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his own death because of the aliens? John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his own death. And the reason that he did that is because he was going to get whacked by the deep state so that they could make way for Hillary Clinton's political aspirations.

and he is now posting these messages online under the pseudonym R. That is a good twist. Yeah. I would never have thought that, like, the hero of the Q, Q-Non conspiracy revolutionary band is John F. Kennedy Jr., who's still alive. Didn't he die? He died a plane crash. He died a plane crash, right? So people start seeing Q iconography everywhere related to the Kennedys.

For example, take a look at this overhead view of the Eternal Flame, the Graham site of Jim. I can already, I don't even need to do it. It's in a circle and it's a flame, so it's a cue. Oh, no, the road is shaped. It's a circle that a road leads into. It doesn't even look like a cue, though. It looks like, it looks like a music note that's bent. Tell them that.

This is Alex Goldberg for the Reply All podcast. Can we chat? Because this seems silly. So, I would need a little bit more proof. You can find real things in the world that do look like cues. They're not even trying. So the other thing that's happened related to JFK The other thing that's happened related to JFK

People start posting pictures from Trump rallies And saying Take a look at this guy This guy has been showing up at Trump rallies No one can know you're alive You're gonna hide by going to Trump rallies This person, this JFK Jr. person is named Vincent Fuska.

Here's a picture of him. Wait, which guy? That's this, both of those are the same guy. No one has ever looked less like J.F.K.K., he's like, he's a dude. He's got long hair and his scraggly beard. If you think that that doesn't look like him, just wait until you see this picture of Vincent Fuska's face superimposed over JFK's face. Oh my God. Two people have never looked less similar. Donald Trump looks more like Jave K. Jr. than Vincent Fuska. So suddenly, a bunch of people in.

in the Q&ON conspiracy galaxy, start talking about him nonstop, like making YouTube videos that say, like, is Vincent Fusca actually JFK Jr? Here. We need to wake up. That's not Vincent Fusco or Fusco.

That's JFK Jr. Mind you, it's been 19 years since we last saw him. But also, that's not underestimate the hair, the hat, the glasses, the beard, everything, facial reconstruction. Who knows? And Vincent Fuska has been

directly asked, like, hey, are you actually JFK Jr? And he hasn't either confirmed or denied it. But he does take pictures with Q believers all the time and has kind of become like this fringe hero. That's wild. So I was like, well, I want to get in touch with

Vincent Fuska. Okay. I found a person with his name living in Pittsburgh, which is supposedly where he lives, on LinkedIn. And I sent a LinkedIn message which said, hey, I've been reading about this conspiracy theory, and he got back to me. He called me. I was in an interview so I couldn't pick up. But I'm pretty sure that I got the wrong guy because this is the voicemail I got. Next, episode number 126, Alex Jones Dramageddon.

Okay. We have another person in studio now. We're Pile producer Anna Foley. Hey, guys. Hi. Hey, Anna. If you remember, I came in to tell you about some drama that was going on in the beauty YouTube community. Oh, I remember. The YouTube community. Yes, YouTube. Yes.

So I have a small update for you. So do you remember I talked about this technique called a cut crease? Yeah. It was a fancy thing you'd do on your eyes. And you were bringing this up because you were just literally explaining, like, some of why you loved YouTube. And it was just like tutorials. I mean, I love YouTube because of the drama. I mean, I watched a ton of tutorials on cut creases because, like, most of the time I can

look at a look or like someone's face and kind of replicated on my own, but like a cut crease, I didn't even know where to start. So I had to watch a lot of tutorials. There are so many on there. Hey guys. So today I created this super glam cut crease ombray makeup look. So first thing I'm doing, of course, is priming my eyes. I want to be using that rusty kind of shade into the crease and I'm just putting that all over making sure it's highly, highly pigmented. All right, you guys, is the finish look. I hope you guys enjoy this fun yellow cut crease eye with top lashes,

bottom lashes featuring. So after watching literally hours of these tutorials, I am happy to report that I learned how to do a cut crease. Congratulations. Thank you. There's something like that's distinctly rewarding

about learning something off the internet and then actually being able to do it that feels very good. Can I see a picture? Sure. It looks really good. Thank you. Let me see. I was picturing something less subtle. Like, I don't know. Alex, can you describe it?

Yeah, it's just like a dark line right where the fold of your eye. And then it's just sort of like gets gradually later out from there. Like a sunrise. Well, congratulations on learning. Thank you. That was difficult. Thank you. I was thinking, though, that it would be very cool if we could all leave 2018 being able to do a cut crease.

So I beg your. So you want us to do cut crease? Are you guys up to the challenge? I feel like I can learn a cut crease. Yeah? I'll give it a shot. So I would like to give you all the weekend to practice with your supplies. Watch the video.

Are you going to judge? Yes. I think that we should all meet back here Monday morning and everybody can come in their cut crease. All right. See you guys Monday. See you Monday. All right. It's um, 542 a.m.

I'm gonna cut crease my eyes. All right, this is gonna be awesome. I gotta take my glasses off so I can't see anything. Okay. I feel so stressed out. This is so dumb. I'm taking the little brush guy and putting it in the thing that looks like a paint palette,

which is a natural shadow palette. Oh, no, looks like, My face looks like when they try to cover graffiti and they just make it uglier. Yeah? I am. I'm doing it. Putting makeup on them is hard. It's really hard. Alright.

Here comes the concealer. I have no idea how much to put on of this stuff too. Just that's probably... Alright. Okay. That is not a good line. I can see it. Oh my god.

Okay. I think that's everything. What do you think? It's probably not going to win this. Good morning, Anna. Good morning, Alex. We are here. Both PJ and I are wearing sunglasses to obscure our makeup.

Alex Bloomberg has his hat pulled down over his face. And we are ready to do our big reveal. How did it go? It's so, so hard. Yeah, it's really hard. It was so. Oh, my God. It's so hard.

It's like painting a painting on your face. I know. All right. Alex Bloomberg, take it away. Ready? Should I take it? I'm going to take my glasses too. Ooh.

What? Yeah, you live pretty good. Really? Yeah. So Alex Bloomberg kind of nailed the winged eyeliner. Damn, son. I bailed on that part. I tried to do it like three times.

It was not happening. And then, like, you can you close your eyes really quick? you kind of, you got the concealer. Like you really, you put it in the right place. It's cutting your crease. You've got a little bit of glitter on the lid and a little bit of definition in the crease. Okay.

It looks, you know, it looks pretty good. There was a stumble on that. It looks that. You got a little suspicious. No, I think it looks good. It looks insane. But thank you. I want to say something before I take my glasses off,

which is that, like, I was really hoping to get the cool black. line right above my eye and I had the like pencil that you're supposed to draw it on with. This is very difficult and I like the idea of having a wing though. I want to have a wing. I want to have an eye wing. Give me them eye wings. I can't see anything because I don't have my glasses on. But I got them eye wings. I got some eye wings. Yeah. What? What are you supposed to do about that? So I just kind of had to smear it on.

I think that like actually what ended up having is I just kind of understand. It just kind of looks like kind of understated. Here. That is kind of understated. It is. It's very subtle. I really tried. I did this for a half an hour, guys.

I was caking stuff on there. You just see it like a subtle dark line extend towards the like end of your eyebrow. Goldman, you look very subtle. It also kind of looks like you. wore mascara and a little bit of eyeliner and then you jumped in a pool. You just forgot that you had makeup on and then you went and had a great time of splice flashing around. This is what I will say. I feel like I can wear mascara every day.

That shit's easy to put on and it makes me look, it makes my eyes pop. And then I would say Bloomberg is on the like more dramatic serving a look like Cleopatra Night side of things, which I think is the side of the island. So I think that's the right side. Okay. I didn't do a good job. I just kept going wrong and then I kept putting more on Can you close your eyes and look at me? Okay.

So you've got, you've got, I think you have the most glitter out of everyone. That's a superlative. Did you use the eyeliner? Yes. And then I waked off and then I put it back on. You put it back on? I couldn't do the line. So do I have to rank you guys?

Should I thank you guys? I think you should do third place first. Okay. So I think just based on the assignment, which was a cut crease eye with like a little bit like a dark shadow and then a light shadow, I think third place is going to have to go to you, Alex Goldman. Just because subtlety is like an art in of itself, but a cut crease is not subtle.

I wasn't trying to be subtle. The point broke off my pencil. What a loser excuse. All right. Okay. I think if we're like if we're keeping with that criteria and it's like

what are the elements of the cut crease You gotta have the line You gotta have the Cleopatra line You gotta have the Cleopatra line Well can I say the point broke off my pencil You could say it but it would be a lot You had all the tools You just need a bad job

I'm not gonna lose or lament this I'm happy to have silver metal It's great Your mascara is very nice Thank you And first place Yes Yes!

The beautiful Alex Bloomberg. How does it feel? It feels itchy? Can I take it off now? If you would like to see pictures of our beautiful makeup contest, we're going to put them in our newsletter, which is weekly. You can subscribe to it at replyall.com. We'll also put them on our Instagram.

Episode 82. Hello. Okay, so back in 2016, we decided to take phone calls from the listeners for 48 hours. And one of the calls we got was towards the end. It was from this woman who, she's originally from India, but she was living in Basel, Switzerland. And the reason she called was because she just had her first kiss. 24. And I kissed a guy for the first time, like, a month ago, maybe. Congratulations.

That's really exciting. I agree. Then it was not nice. I did not like it. So now I'm wondering if, like, how do I know I'm straight? I don't know that. But whenever I have talked to my dad, especially in op-you-stones about this, he has, he is very homophobic. So things are strained at home right now because I feel I cannot be honest about my stuff.

We talked for a really long time without really solving anything. Like, her dad was her best friend. She didn't want to lie to him. And she also just wanted the space to even, like, figure out if she was bisexual. And it was just very hard to solve. Anyway, that was two years ago. Hello. Hello.

Oh, hi. How's it going on? How's it going? It's going good. I did not expect to talk to you guys straight away. Well, here we are. Yes, it's nice to hear your voice. So it's been two years since we talked.

Yes. Yes. So what's happened since then? A lot has happened since then. I gave things a lot of thought and I decided, okay, maybe I cannot date women straight away, but I can try dating more men and seeing how I like that. And some of them went okay. And basically I found out at least that it was just, just one terrible kiss and not all kisses have to be like that. That is a relief. That's a great thing to find out. Yes. So now that you've kissed more people, was your first kiss the worst kiss that you've had,

or is it just one of the less good ones and there were worse than that one? I think it was one of the less good ones. I think it's, I find like men like to dominate kisses, whereas, I don't know, maybe it's too, You mean the thing we're just like, oh my God, your whole tongue's in my mouth for some reason. Yeah, it's like, here's a mouth and let me just snog it. And more like two people room to breathe. And I had so little experience that I could not say no to this. And I thought maybe this is just how people did it.

And it turns out, no, you can be more gentle about it. And about the, I mean, I feel reasonably confident that I am bisexual. But I'm also reasonably confident that I will never act on that side of me. Really? Yeah, because I gave a lot of thought to what you said. And I agree my relationship with my dad will never be that close again. But I have. no, it's okay because I have like come to realize, I think, I don't know, over the last two years,

I've started to realize like your parents are people too and they are like, they make mistakes too. Yeah. And not everything has to match what you think. So, and yeah, so I couldn't, I didn't have the courage to talk to my dad about this directly, but I did talk to my sister about this. And how did she take it? she react? He did not react very well to that.

I'm sorry. What kind of bad reaction? In the sense that it was more like, okay, fine. Even if you are bisexual, what will you do about it? You cannot act on this because in our community people don't do this. It's her words were basically like, just because you read about it, you now know that you have more options and that's why you think like this. And I was like, okay, if a person from my own generation has reactions like this, what can I expect from older generations?

Right. I don't know if that's fair, because older generations can be progressive too. But I don't know. It just, I was very disappointed for a month or two because I felt like she should have understood. Yeah. Yeah. And when she did not, I was like, okay. So the chances of convincing everyone about this are very close to zero.

Yeah. I understand what you're saying. Do you feel at peace with the idea of this? Like that this is sort of prescribed and like your family is important to you and this is a sacrifice you're willing to make? Like, do you feel okay about it? Now, yes, yes. It's okay. Yeah, I know now what I'm sacrificing, but what I'm getting to keep in return.

So I'm okay with it, yeah. And maybe things will change over time. I feel like sometimes I've like made peace with stuff and then later been like, actually, I'm going to change it. Like what? I'm somebody where I have like a relationship with my parents where there's lots of things they don't want me to do. Like my mom worries a lot.

This isn't the same scale of importance as your stuff. but she was like, it was very important to her that I never get a motorcycle. She was just like, I'll worry too much, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, well, I don't want to upset my mom or upset my relationship with my mom. And then after a couple decades of being alive, I was like, oh, wait, I could just not tell her, which worked out great. And the other thing that was crazy about it was like, she came to visit me. And she was like, you know, every time my mom comes to visit, she starts messing with my apartment,

messing with. She starts cleaning it and making it nicer than it is. And so she was doing that And she came out of like my closet holding a motorcycle helmet Did she come out? Was she like fuming? She was She looked surprised and curious

And I think I could be misromanious But I think that I started to make up a story And then I was like, oh, that's the motorcycle helmet For the motorcycle I have that I don't tell you about Because you would freak out about it And how did she deal? She wasn't not as bad as I thought Like I think there's something about, not that it always happens like this at all, but it was easier to be like, I'm doing this and I've been doing it for a couple years and I, you know, then it would have been if it was easier to get forgiveness than permission in that case. I'm not saying it's the same thing, but it taught me my strategy.

Right. Right. Maybe, yeah, maybe I still need to do a bit more growing up and by the time I reached 30, I can be like, I don't need permission any. more easy to just tell. Yeah. It does just sound nice that it feels like you're less, you feel less anxiety, like you don't feel as much pain as you were feeling before. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's, I don't know how to explain it. I just feel more settled. And like, does it happen to you when your professional life is also in flux, then it starts to infect everything? Yes. Yeah. And, yeah. And I was like, at that point right there then that this was also happening but i was just finishing up my master's and i was like i don't know what to do and everything feels oh and right right and then i started my phd and it's like no this is work i really enjoy and i like doing it and i am good at it so

that side of me is very happy so it infects the rest and i'm like maybe it's okay if i find my If I take my own time, you know, finding the right person, it's fine. Totally. Right. Thank you for talking to us. Thanks so much for talking. No worries. Thank you for taking the time out to talk to me.

Can we check in again in like a year? Of course. Hello, hello. Hey, Tim. Hey, guys. How's it going? It's going great. Good.

I'm Tim. Hi, Tim. Tim, you don't need to introduce yourself to us. you edit the show. Well, I think maybe, I guess what I'm suggesting is that not everybody who's listening has any idea who I am. Not everybody understands that there's a wizard of Oz behind the curtain pulling our strings like little marionettes. Hi. So, okay, anyway, I wanted to actually have the honor to co-introduce with you guys the last segment of our year-end extravaganza.

And also I feel like it, I don't know, for personal reasons, it really speaks to me this year, much more than like I would have possibly ever imagined. Tim, just for like listener benefit, do you want to say, we're not currently in the same room? Like, do you want to say where you are? Right. So I'm in, I'm in Berlin. I got here about seven months ago. Where I am is kind of, kind of funny.

I never would have expected to end up in this. particular room. I work in a co-work space in this old, it's called an outbow, which is like the German word for like old construction. So I show up at this space every day as everybody else is getting ready to go home because I'm working on, you know, New York hours. New York time. Literally nobody here. All the lights are off. And then I go over to the back of the room where there's this door with this giant metal bar across it. And then I open the door and it goes into this like abandoned stairwell, a freezing abandoned stairwell.

And then right there on the right there's this little door that goes into what was once a water closet or toilet. It's like something a lot of people would call a toilet, but what you call your home. Yeah, but it's really, I actually really love it. It's really, I don't know. I like tiny little secluded spaces. And actually like at the moment, I have to like, I take a blank. it and I wrap it around my lower half because it's so fucking cold near.

And like if I open this door here, well, it's just totally dark. Hello? There's just, it just echoes down many floors. Yeah, so anyway, and then I come here and then I like turn on my computer. And I actually really enjoy this thinking about the idea that like I'm here in this dark and cold little space. It feels like a little perch. at these, I like to think about the cables that are traveling like thousands of miles at the

bottom of the ocean and how there's like billions of little sea creatures like running over these cables for us to connect to each other and then, you know, make our stories. I don't know if it's true, but. It is true. There are gigantic undersea cables. And they go right past that giant monster that makes the big bloop. The big bloop? You don't know about the big bloop? No. There, all these, what are people to the ocean? Oceanographers? Sure. So they started hearing this thing from like a part of the ocean that is way too deep to, way too deep to explore. Yeah.

They started hearing the sound on using like whatever sophisticated techniques they used to collect sound from the ocean floor. And they were like, we think it's an animal, but we've never heard anything like it. And it's insanely, like it sounds like it's coming from something insanely big. And it's called the big bloop. Because the sound itself is a big bloop? Yeah. Okay. Here it is.

Do you hear the bloop? I heard like a tummy rumbling. It goes, bloop. Yeah, it sounds like the sound of fish tank makes sometimes. That's awesome. So they've actually decided that this is probably not the sound of an undersea creature, but actually like ice shifting way under the ocean. But I prefer to believe that it is a giant,

terrifying sea creature. Man. Anyway. Yeah, I mean, sorry to get all romantic about the cables. No, actually, I feel like both of those things, both like the place where you work from and the place where the big bloop emanates from are, they're like perfectly appropriate to unobtainium, right? Exactly. So that's like, that's our last segment of the Excavaganza.

So a couple months ago, we put out a call to listeners just saying like, hey, send us your recordings from your most like remote, unexpected, could be lonely places, or maybe it's actually just like a really kind of a personal place where you are. And people sent us an insane number of recordings. And some of them are just stories. And then some of them are actually just sounds with no explanation, but that are in their own right really, really just satisfying. So that's what I'm going to play for you guys now. Cool. Thanks, Tim. Cool. All right. Hey Alex and PJ. This is Chris Prairie calling from the middle of the Cactus Eagle ultramarathon trail race deep in the heart of the Texas Hill Country.

Well, currently I'm on top of a ridge in the middle of this really rugged and beautiful terrain. It's about 1.30 in the morning. There's a very bright shining moon. The stars are out, not a cloud in the sky. Let you kind of listen to what I'm hearing, hear all the bugs and stuff making noise, and hearing my footsteps, and pretty much what I've been hearing for the last 18 hours of so. I'm speaking to you from the epicenter of opioid addiction. In Central Ohio, it's dreary outside. My day off, and I know that by two or three o'clock, I'll start. having brain zaps tomorrow morning. My legs will become weak and tired as I'm going up and down the

stairs and I'll just feel exhausted and annoyed at everything. Like my bones are hungry. And I just got married and I have no idea how to talk to my wife about this because it's so embarrassing. disappointing. That's where I'm at. Wow, this feels really dangerous. I'm on a footbridge with my dog and we're crossing this footbridge and he and I are kind of scared right now because it's wooden and it feels like it's going to fall. Anyway, you'll be able to hear the roosters that get abandoned here. I can see like five of them by a river creek. Hi guys. I'm in the Singapore Botanic Gardens and I'm next to the lake. Oh, the wind's blowing.

We are listening to the Arabian Sea from the ancient port of Calicut at the bottom of India. I'm calling from the bedroom of my apartment in Sacramento. I, about five years ago, was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and it has pretty much kept me confined to my room for the majority of the time. And it can be extremely. isolating, which is why I listen to podcasts to feel a little bit less alone. And so I'm sitting on my bed with my two cats, and this is the sound of my bedroom. That's what I hear for most of the time. So I'm sitting in a glass booth in the middle of a parking lot on the

state fairgrounds in Minnesota, St. Paul. But nobody has shown up for this event, and I've been sitting here for two hours. The heater's not working in my booth, so I still have my coat on. My nose is a little cold. And there are leaves in the booth. I wonder if anyone will hear this. Good day, Alex and PJ. Um, that place you were talking about, I'm calling from it now.

Physically I'm on a place called the Mullum Mullum Trail walking over a wooden bridge, faded planks. You can probably hear the birds. It's um, we're in Melbourne, Australia, sort of in the outer suburbs and I'm leaning on the wood and I'm looking over at a creek. But the place I'm in is because I've just been running and I've been running every morning because I'm waking up with this emptiness, this loneliness, this loss in my stupe.

stomach because three weeks ago now my son was downstairs he's 15 he was 15 and he was downstairs playing fortnight probably and he came upstairs and it was a Saturday morning and he said I'm feeling a bit dizzy and we looked into his eyes and his eyes were going all over the place and he said he started to feel numb and he was losing his balance and he sat on the couch and I held him what my wife called the ambulance and we spent two weeks in intensive care unit at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne and he was unconscious and on life support and after two weeks of testing and everything like that they identified that his um it wasn't really life support the treatment they were giving him was really

just prolonging his death and so last Sunday that was removed and my 15 year old son died on the 4th of November this is a very lonely place it's a very difficult place I've been referring to it as as the upside down my son Collier loved love stranger things and this is exactly it exactly feels like that

it's the world it's the same world it's just remarkably different and it's remarkably darker and it's a bit scary because I don't know what happens next Honestly, it feels a little rude to be talking. It is so quiet. I'm pretty much on top of the world right now.

I can see mountains, hills and miles and miles. I'm not at the end of the world yet, because I've got to make it up those hills, but pretty damn close. I'm currently in Ballet Mountains National Park, Ethiopia. Just out for a little hike searching for the Ethiopian wolf, which is an endangered species. endangered species. The reason I'm feeling isolated because I'm currently riding a bicycle from Cairo Egypt down to Cape Town South Africa. About a month before I left, I met a girl I want to fall in love with. She's back in Canada though and I'm out walking through the wilderness. That's not working out too well for either of us, but hopefully she's a patient one. Hey guys,

I'm actually on guard duty right now on a base in the middle of the desert in Israel. I serve in the IDF right now. All around me is a bunch of desert mountains and a fence with barbed wire. It gets pretty boring here, but I find ways to keep busy. Sometimes I'm listening to podcasts. Technically, I should be listening to the sound of ATVs to make sure nobody's try to sneak in to steal things. It's 2.30 a.m. in South Africa. I'm speaking kind of quietly because I don't want to wake up my girlfriend who's sleeping next to me.

I started testosterone around six months ago. And basically everything... it has been good. I accept that now it just takes me a whole lot longer to fall asleep. So before

I got to basically always fall asleep first in her caring arms and now I kind of just need to lie awake with my thoughts for a while and I don't like

those thoughts I don't like that. I end up feeling so alone when there's someone right next to me because I don't want to wake her up. Thank you to everybody who sent us a recording. We're actually still taking them, so if you find yourself out there in one of those places,

record a minute of it. You can email them to us at reply all at gimletmedia.com, subject line, unobtainium. Thanks for hanging out with us this year. We'll see you in 2019. Alex and PJ, I'm on a train in the south of India. I'm going from Kanur on the west coast, across to Chennai on the east coast.

It's an overnight train. It's 9.25 p.m. At the moment, I'm logged in the toilet, speaking into my phone. I'm like a madman. I don't know if you can hear me. This is very loud. Reply all is hosted by PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. We're produced by Shruthy Pinnaminani, Fia Benin, Damiano Marquetti, Anna Foley, and Jessica Young.

Our show is edited by Tim Howard. We're mixed by Rick Kwan, fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our intern is Heather Schurrick. Our theme song is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Special thanks this week to Paris Martino, Bill Thomas, Gia Tolentino, Aaron Lamer, Josephine Coatsworth, Julie Foley. Mendi Stubson, Kashmir Hill, and Seth Abramovich. Matt Lieber is when you're folding your laundry and you find five bucks in one of your pants pockets.

You can listen to the show on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in the new year.