Reply All - #139 The Reply All Hotline

Episode Date: March 28, 2019

This week, PJ and Alex open up the phone lines and try to solve your problems, big and small. Don’t type like my brother. Further Reading: Jusoor Institute of International Education PEER Michael Bazzel's workbook to remove your personal information online Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldman. And I'm PJ Phaven. What's the number? Press the dial pad there. Can you pick that up? Hello. Thank you for using Google phone verification.

You're welcome. Your code is 201. Shut the fuck up. 7.0.9. This is actually so much so distracting. This is actually so annoying. The verification procedure has as expired and must be restarted. So last week, we got in the studio with our editor Tim and a few producers because we'd ask people to call in with questions.

Big questions, small questions, tech, non-tech, and we got a lot of calls, and we tried to answer them. All right, try hanging up and let's see what happens. Okay, we're getting our first call. Hello? Hello. Hey. Hey, who's this? My name's Eric. I'm calling from Canada. We're in Canada.

I'm Vancouver. Cool. I've never been there, but I went to school in Montreal. What is your question? Let's go on a quick thought experiment here. I've got kids, and if I sent the kids to the store to... Do you have actual kids, or are these kids just in the thought experiment? Oh, wait, no, I actually have kids. Okay.

And say I send them to Best Buy to buy, I don't know, something for the house. With cash, they can do it. That's fine. But if I send them with my credit card, they can't do it. Right. Right. But if they're online and they're buying an app in the app store, they have to have a profile that is guaranteed by my credit card and they can buy stuff with my credit card. And I think that's probably a breach of some sort of contract, right?

Entering into a contract with a minor with a credit card that's not there. Who do you want arrested in this situation? Yeah. Is it your kids or is it Apple? Apple, because this is the thing that got me on this is that my kid bought this app, truth or dare. And I don't know the nature of the app, but I bet it's truth or dare kind of related. And he's 14, right?

Like, so him and his friends, they're, you know, experimenting with girls and stuff like that. So truth or dare was kind of age appropriate. It was free for the first month, maybe, or week. And then it started to pop up, like, do you want to buy the thing? And he's like, no. And then it would say, right away, would you want to buy the thing? And he's no, no, no, no. And so he got into this situation where he's just,

pressing no a bunch of times. And then they flipped where the no and the yes were. Oh my God. That's real sketchy. I know. Wait, that's just the beginning. Guess how much it costs for this app? $149 a week.

Are you serious? What does this app do? Tricks kids and putting stuff on their parents. So, you know what kids do is, and this is my son did, and I don't blame them for doing it, right away he deleted the app, right? Because he's like, oh, no, something happened. I pressed yes, I didn't mean to, but if I delete the app, no big deal, right?

Well, three weeks later, when I get my credit card statement, there's three weeks of $149 for this. That's awful. That's straight appetitori. Right? So Apple comes back and says, no, he bought the app. And I was like, no, he didn't because you never. fulfilled on that he deleted the app so he never used it right and they're like oh no technically he bought it and I'm like but technically what in the hell you can't have something where it flips the

notice it just feels like such a straightforward scam yeah and so they just won't have and they're like okay what did they say no they did eventually help me but they never got back to me on the like isn't it illegal to enter into a a contract with a minor like why does it kid have to have a credit card verified iTunes account to get free apps. Why would you just make it so that a kid's account, you can't buy anything? Does he have his own individual iTunes account or is it your account? Yeah, yeah. He has a kid's iTunes account, but a kid's iTunes account has to be verified or at least at the time. I think they were saying they were talking about changing it, but I don't know if they have. You have to put in your credit card. Oh, wait, I do have something to tell you. Okay. Okay, so apparently iTunes does have a feature, which even though it seems like you do need a credit card to set up the account, you can take the credit card off the account once it's been set up. Oh.

Yeah. Yeah. I want that. You just select none as payment type. I'm doing that today. Yeah. You guys are the best. All right.

Thanks, man. Thank you. Thank you guys. Bye. That was the one person on the question. Oh, never mind. Hello. Hi.

Hi, this is Alex, and PJs here also, unfortunately. What's your question? That felt really rude. Okay, so my question is... Is it a baby sleeping? No, no, no. I'm at work. Oh, okay.

Okay, okay. So I get this email ever since I went on vacation to Paris and connected to Wi-Fi. And it's one of those hacker emails where they're like, we've been watching you, we have a Trojan on your computer, send us Bitcoin money. Uh-huh. And they're like, in five days, if you don't send us a money, we're going to, we're going to like a half your account.

Oh, and send a million things out to all your friends and family. And I've always waited and nothing ever happened. And so I just want to know if I should be worried about it or if it's just because they have my email. You shouldn't be worried. You shouldn't be worried. Yeah. The other version of this scam that is like slightly more convincing and scary is that they'll go

on the internet and they'll find password dumps where, you know, you used to have like an Adobe account or something and your old password leaked from years ago. And they'll send you an email where they're like, we have your password. And even though it's an old password, it makes it feel more specific. And so people in that situation have been handing over money, but you definitely should not hand over money. They definitely don't have anything. I think the other thing that they do a lot is like, we hacked your computer. We've turned on your webcam. We've seen you watching pornography. We're going to send this video to your family unless you give us the thing. And honestly, And honestly, that scam does work.

Researchers have followed the Bitcoin accounts that they put in there. And it's like a couple million dollars that people have made from doing this. But you don't have to worry about it. It's not because of the French Wi-Fi. It's just someone who's like taking a gamble on you. And I wouldn't worry about it. Thank you. Well, that's wonderful.

Yeah, no problem. All right. Bye. Bye. I don't actually answer. Hello? Oh, me answer. We don't actually answer.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Very rude. Yeah. You have been caught. We have two minutes before we have to go to our philosophy. We have the hand in the paper. But we were wondering if you thought, did you hear the viral story about the rat that was putting away tools in a toolbox in like, I don't even know Sweden or something?

I did. Alex hears every one of these stories. I can't. I can't. And he would like more people to send them to him. No. Just in case. I've heard every rat story since 2015.

Can you just explain what the episodes in case somebody hasn't heard it? Oh, so the episode of Zardulu is all about this very mysterious and wonderful woman who aims to create viral videos that just kind of like screw with people's perception of the world, but not in like a necessarily malicious way. Yeah, not maliciously at all. It's just really elusive and fascinating. Like, it's got to be her, right? Do you think it's Ardulu, Alex? Here's what I can tell you. I have a back channel, fairly regular conversation with Zardulu, and she's still working.

I can't tell you more than you. No, no, no, no, answer the question. Do you think the rat in Sweden is Ardulu or don't you? Oh, I know. I definitely think it was. You do? Yes. Really?

Yeah. Really? She does work internationally. I feel like you're doing some winky Santa Claus shit. She does work internationally and every once in a while she'll get in touch with me and just send me a picture. It'll be like, it'll be like, an alligator on water skis. And she'll be like, what's up? And like, I mean, that's not exactly the whole thing.

But she does that to me. I totally wouldn't be surprised in the least if it was her. Wow. Wow. Wow. Oh, my gosh. The only exception to the It's Always Zarulu rule is whenever there's something that's rat related where it's like, you know, there was a video of a rat washing itself for a while, and it seemed like that... That rat was very unhappy in that video, and she would never do anything that would cause harm to an animal.

All right. Bye guys. Bye. I went to Krispy Kreme this morning. You did? Oh, my body feels terrible. I shouldn't have done it. Hello? Hello. Hello. Who's this? My name's Shane. How are you?

Good. How are you? I'm doing well. So I had a question. Yeah. Okay. I was trying to get myself off the internet, and I started doing some research, and I found that there's like a couple of ones called Fast People Search.

Oh, I know what you're talking about. These websites where they can check your name and they get your full address and your family and your age and all this stuff. And phone number. Yeah. So the reason I'm doing all this is because I have a job where, I work with people and sometimes they have at-risk behaviors. And, like, I kind of want to become anonymous and now all this information is often.

Is it okay to ask you a follow question of just like, what do you mean by at-risk behaviors? So I work with people with developmental disabilities and some of them have issues with, like, boundaries. And one of the people on my caseload had some sexualized behavior and had stock people, like, really, intensely in the past. Yeah. So just to kind of eliminate that and protect my family, change my name, whatnot. And I didn't know how to go about like getting rid of that information. Yeah. So the thing with these websites is there's a million of them. But all of them that I've seen have the ability to opt out. It's just the annoying thing is you kind of have to go like one by one by one by one. Legally, they have to offer you the option to opt out. But the nice thing is that

The more popular ones, which would be like the first ones you would see, which you would take your name off of, would also be the first one somebody trying to get your address would see. And so if you, like, we actually, we have a resource that's a big list of all those sites. Yeah. If you look in the show notes of episode 130, the Snapchat Thief, there is a worksheet of, I think about 90 of these websites. And it shows you the URL and what it takes to opt out. And a lot of times it just has a link directly to the opt out page. So you should check that out. It'll be very helpful in terms of that stuff.

Okay, you guys said 130 on that, right? Yeah, episode 130. Okay. Thanks so much, man. Take care. Hey, thank you guys. Bye. Bye-bye.

Hello. I don't know. What about? Were you complaining about being on the wait list in that moment? I was. You're not the first person we've caught in this behavior. Dude, I have fucking called so many times. Who are you?

Dude, they're like, hang up, call back. Hank, my name is Nick, dude. I'm from Illinois. Cool? What can we do for you? Nick. Okay, I got a couple questions, all right? Uh-huh.

First of all, what was your, what was your user handle on Tripset? Will you tell me? Oh, Tripson. I don't remember. Oh, come on, dude. You're probably an active user. You have an active user of Tripsi? So for people who don't remember Tripsis, it's the website you go to if you're too high

and you need to be talked down from a drug trip or if you want to talk down people who are too high, what do you, in your imagination where I'm using Tripset all the time, am I too high? all the time or am I counseling people down all the time? He's too high all the time. Alex, I'm not asking me this question. No, it's, um, I just got me too high, Allison. Oh, come on. Yeah, come on.

You've got a, I'm going to get too high kind of personality. That's true. Are you using Tripset? Me, I use Tripsett. Yeah, I love Tripsett. Are you talking people down? Are you talking people down? I go both ways.

What's your handle? Def not Nick. Def, not Nick? Like, this is definitely not Nick. Yeah. But your name is. Definitely not Nick. Not Nick.

The last time I did mushrooms was in 1998. That was before there was a trip sit. And it was a pretty bad situation for me because my life was definitely not in order at the time. And you know, like when you're stressed out about something, there's like an amplification that happens. And so what I remember is trying to alphabetize my record collection and getting too stressed out over it. and then calling my mom and crying. And if I had tripset, if I had trips at,

things probably would have been a little better for me. What did your mom say when you called her crying and trying to alphabetize her I didn't call her and say, I can't help her in my record collection. I just called her and cried

more generally about the difficulties of being alive. And she was pretty sympathetic. She's your mom. She's my mom. I feel like I should give her a call and thank her for that. You should because I've been there

like it was not that long ago. I had my mom involved. What happened? A huge acid trip. Oh, well, I took too much acid for one. Like, I should have taken that much. Yeah. And, and I thought I was dying.

Like, I literally was like, oh, dude. And then, like, it's so weird because, like, I traveled into a different universe in my head. And, like, I went to a place where it was just one building. And there was this, there was two people, right? And they just kept eating and eating and eating. And, like, they were turning into slugs, right? Oh my gosh. It's pretty ugly.

But this is like me in my head. Like I wasn't like, I'm not seeing this shit. I'm like dreaming reality. I don't know. It was weird. But they're like eating and eating and eating until the point where there was nothing left to eat except for each other. And like that was the end of the world.

Like that's how the government killed off our species. And I come to and I'm like, what the fuck? My mom is sitting in my bedroom. My mom is at my house in my bedroom. And she's like, I'm like, the world is fucking. up mom and she's like, I know Nick or else fucked up. That's a lot like the conversation I have with my mom. Dude, hey, man, moms are good people, dude.

You know, life's hard, but moms are good people, dude. You know? That is so true. Oh, man. That's crazy. Man, I'm just so happy I talk to you guys today, dude. Thanks, definitely not, Nick. Hey, thank you guys, dude.

It's a blessing talking to you. Do you remember your second question or no? I wish I did do so I could talk to you guys longer. I really do. I do not. That's all right. All right, Nick. But maybe I will remember and I'll play you guys back.

Cool. Sounds good. Thanks, man. All right, guys. All right, later, guys. Bye, man. Did you hear how we ended that? What did he say?

Rock on. Ha ha ha. That is a good soul. Hello? Hello? Hi. Who's this? This is Caitlin.

Hey, Caitlin. How you doing? This is Alex and PJ. Good. What's your question? My question is I have a garbage phone. A garbage phone? I started a garbage phone. I started a new job a couple months ago, and basically I got a new number to the office,

and I started getting all these calls from people wanting to know if I could come pick up their trash for a garbage company. Oh, so you don't mean like a bad cell phone. No, no, no. trying to figure out what garbage phone meant. I thought you were just like it didn't work right or like you were going to say I got a new job and they gave me like a crappy old flip phone. No. When they call, what do they say about their garbage? So first they were calling to try and start like a new service for pickup.

Okay. And I was like, no, I am not the garbage company. So then I researched the garbage company because I was getting a good number of calls and they went on a business. last October, but I was still getting these calls, and I didn't see my phone number on their website anywhere. But these people who were calling me would, like, read me back my office phone number, but I had no idea where they were getting it for us. Did you ask them? Yeah, they said they would get it online. But when you went online, it wasn't there. It was a lot of, no, it wasn't on there. So I kind of stopped answering my phone for a while. And, but then I kept getting more calls.

And so finally I decided to call the number that was listed online, which was not my office phone number. And so I called that number and it went to my voicemail. But it wasn't my number. I know. Okay. As shocked as Alex is, what it sounds like is call forwarding. But it's so weird. What are the chances?

But it's actually good because if it's forwarding, you could, if you could reach them, you could get them to stop it from forwarding. Or you could block that number. I feel like you could call your phone company and be like, someone's forwarding my phone. Can you block anything that's forwarded from this number? Okay. Yes, but it also got a little deeper. Oh. So on the website for the garbage disposal company,

it says that they had to go out of business last October and to call this new garbage disposal company where all of their accounts are being transferred. So I called the new garbage disposal company and I said, look, the old number is being forwarded to my voicemail. can you take care of this or tell me how to contact these people? And they said, no, they've literally followed to face the earth. No one knows how to contact them. We have no contact with them.

We just have their account. Weird. But then later that day, I got a call from someone, and at this point I'm invested. So I pick up the phone. And it's this guy who's looking for the garbage disposal company and telling me that he's still being charged for the defunct garbage company. Weird. And I said, sir, they went out of business last year.

And he said, I know I'm getting charged. for two garbage disposal companies. At this point, you're kind of, you kind of have just been willed into actually having a job working for a defunct garbage. Like you're doing a, you're feeling a customer complaint. Can you tell me what they're called? They both have super patriotic names,

these two garbage disposal companies. Super patriotic names? Yeah, so one, the defunct one is called freedom disposal. Freedom disposal. That could also be super unpatriotic. Like you're throwing freedom in the trash. I guess. Yeah, it definitely could be. But then the other garbage company is called American Disposal. Again. When you put disposal after things.

I mean, true. Could you change your number? I think I could, but I'm kind of invested in this garbage story, too. Like, I want to see what happened. So I haven't, I haven't, like, taken those steps yet. But if it becomes excessive and there's, like, no way to. figure out some kind of end to this story. Also, it's just the principle of the thing, you know? What is the principle of the thing? I feel like whenever somebody says it's just the principle of the thing, they mean there's no reason for what they're doing. Why should you have to change your number when they're the ones who are screwing up?

It's not your fault. Exactly. But the alternative is to do so much extra work. Like, it's not like... But I just got new business cards printing. Look, you have two options here. One is you change your phone number. The other is you just acknowledge to yourself that you are a person,

who likes being in a weird vortex where sometimes you get calls from a garbage company and you enjoy this part of your life. But either you've got to, it's a very, you're a very Alex Coleman personality. Like you either have to decide

to solve it or not solve it, but you don't get to have it both ways. Can I just say that this is very much not in the spirit of reply all what you're doing right now? Just bossing people around? No, telling people to change their number with the actual correct

morally righteous solution. Yes. I literally, I would just love for you to explain to me what is morally righteous. It's not like someone wrong. somebody. You could get mad at like a random number pattern.

Someone is getting charged for two garbage companies and that's morally wrong. That is a thing. I can't stand by in that. And you have nothing to do with the phone. The two of you live in a moral universe where there are people, you know, all sorts of misery in the world. In your moral universe, when someone stops using a phone number and people call that phone number and reach the new person, that is a moral wrong.

that has to be corrected. But that's not what's happening. People are calling a number and it's getting forwarded to her. Somewhere, some phone is doing that. Yes. Some phone. That's true.

And it's being done with no regard. Look, everyone gets to choose how they spend their life. You just have to embrace your choice, I think. Never give up. You got to smash every phone until you find the one that's forwarding to your phone

and that will fix the problem. All right. Good luck, man. Thanks so much for calling. Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye. What are you gickling about?

Just, just, just, just the, my fundamental brokenness. Just the thing that can't be fixed. Hello. Hello. Who's this? I'm Scott. Where are you calling from? I'm calling from Congress.

The one in D.C.? Yeah, I work. Well, I'm actually in one of these small rooms where you can have private conversations. And how do you, you. like in your job, what is your job? I'm just an intern. So how do people who work in Congress use the internet? If you want to talk about some congressional specific things.

Yeah. There are databases that we can access from our IP addresses that we can't access at home. But it's basically like a lobbying database where you can track the sort of revolving door of Congress. Like let's say like chief of staff of X left to. be the public policy director of a marijuana firm or something like that. So, and all their congressional salaries are disclosed on that website. All their assets. So, you know, all their assets like their house? Yeah. And all any investment they have. That has to be that. That feels like a thing that should be available to more people for free. No, that is available

free. It's just hard to get to now. But these are all public disclosure. That's why we have that. How do you or how do people in your office use the, like, Facebook lobbyist's site? Like, what do you, what do people have to look up there? No one necessarily has to look up something. It's just something we have for free. So, like, sometimes I'm just curious about, say, if I'm dating someone and I, like, and they just up the hill, like, is there on the hill, then I kind of want to see how big their salary is and stuff. Oh, my God.

And you can just do that. Yeah, because that's probably information. So have you actually gone on a date and, look somebody up and found them, found their salary? Yeah, of course. Tell me the story. Someone was on Tinder and then, like, you know, he said he was an attorney on the hill, which means he works in Congress, right?

So he showed the Instagram. And from the Instagram, I found his name. And I found his name. I just looked up his salary. And apparently he was not an attorney. He was cheap of staff. So had this guy inflated his title or deflated his title? No, no, no.

He deflated it. Oh. And did your opinion of him change based on his salary and his position? Well, I recommended a more expensive restaurant. That's amazing. Because I was like, I was on Yelp and I did like dollar, dollar, and then there was dollar, dollar, dollar. That's a pretty savvy move. Well, no, no, no, it wasn't.

I mean, I told him that it was, that was what I did. And he thought, um, it was smart. How'd the date go? It didn't go well. He didn't look like his photos, but I got a dollar, dollar, out of it.

I'm happy. I didn't like the restaurant that much, but whatever. Thank you for telling us about Congress internet. It's very interesting. No problem. After the break,

we take some more calls. Hello? Who's this? Oh my God, I got through a gown. Nick. Welcome back, Nick. Do you remember your second question? I do.

Are you? eating food right now? I was. I'm not anymore. I figured you guys probably were gonna answer anyway. We've picked up the phone twice for you now. I feel like the idea that we don't answer the phone is not something you're allowed to believe. Oh, I know. I don't anymore. Now I'm a firm believer that you guys are not

full of shit. Like, oh, we're gonna answer the phone. Like, these guys didn't answer their fucking phones. You're so full of shit. I feel like you're going back again. Do you remember your second question? I do. Okay. So, here's my question. All right. What is the difference between a proxy, a server, a host, and a VPN? And, like, what is your better choice between the three?

Okay, Alex can answer this. Where is this question coming from? What are you trying to figure out how to browse the internet anonymously? Yeah, I guess, yeah, because, like, you know, you go on the dark web and shit. I have a VPN and all that. But, like, with Tor, it says you need to bridge. But, like, okay, so if I have a VPN, what's the point of having a VPN? what's the point of having a proxy or a bridge?

You know what I'm saying? Like, I guess I don't understand, like, why you would need all that shit. So I don't totally know the answer to your question. Okay. What I know as a VPN is essentially, like, basically it's a virtual private network. That's what VPN stands for. And what it means is, like, you are now part of a network that is elsewhere on the internet. So it's not technically a server.

It's more like you are connected to a different network. and your traffic all, when it hits the internet, all looks like it's coming from this network, which happens to be somewhere else. I don't know exactly what a proxy is. So I don't know the difference between that and a VPN. My understanding is it's a server that is between you and the place you're connecting.

Like you're sending your traffic, I send my traffic to you. You send it to the website. I see. So, okay, so I guess that's the difference. A proxy server is like an actual computer you're hitting, whereas a VPN is a network that you're connecting to. Okay.

Oh. What are you doing on the dark web? You know, just stuff and stuff, you know? You know, just hanging out. Okay. Buying stuff and stuff, you know? Buying stuff and stuff, you know. Yeah, that's it.

Definitely not stuff. Definitely not Nick. Definitely not Nick, though. Nick, definitely not Nick buying stuff. That's for sure. Thanks for calling Nick. Thanks for calling back, Nick. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. If you call back and get it and we pick up and you're talking about how we don't pick up, it's going to be messed up. Yeah, we're going to have problems, man. You know what, dude, I've been greedy enough with your guys at time. I'm going to bless some other people with it. All right. Thank you guys so much for answering, guys. All right, bye, guys.

Hey, this is PJ and Alex. Hello? Hey, who's this? Hi. Hey, Hannah. How's it going? Weird. Jinks.

It's good. What's your question? Okay, blue. Mm-hmm. Black and blue. I see white and gold. What do you see? eye, you angle.

Do you think that it's like two on the nose that we saw the different colors? Like, it just feels. It didn't surprise me. I think that this is how we tell whether someone's a PJ or an Alex. We just ask them what color the dress is. The question everyone is dying to know about their own personality, whether they're a PJ or an Alex. You got a healthy ego there, buddy. Thank you for calling.

Thanks, Anna. Have a great day, guys. Bye. That is, like, the most solemn cystic thing. Oh, my God. I don't give a shit. So are you, you are turning red? I am turning red.

I'm an Alex. Was there a part of you that told, that, like, knew that that was a bad thing to say? No, there was no modulation in my head that told me not to say that. Scary, dude. Scary. Hi, this is Alex and PJ. Hi. Hi, who's this?

Hi, this Kimberly. What question do you have for us? Okay, so my question is that I recently discovered that my Amazon Alexa has recorded everything that I've ever said to it. Wait a minute. Is that just a fact of Amazon Alexis? Yes, it's just a fact of it. Amazon Alexis. What? Yeah, you can access the recordings and listen to yourself everything you've ever asked it, which is so creepy by itself. Oh, so everything you've ever asked it, but not everything you do all the time.

No. You have to trigger it. But my follow-up is like that I read this new story about how Alexa had sent this lady's, like, things she was saying that weren't triggered to some of her contact. and that got me thinking, like, how hard would it be for somebody to hack your Alexa? I don't want to put on a sinful hat here, but, you know, and hear everything that you're saying in your house. Is that a thing that can happen? I assume so. I mean, I haven't seen a story of it happening.

A thing that it took me a while to understand is that with any voice-activated device, like Alexa, Siri, whatever, it's not as if it turns on when you say the word Alexa. Like, it's always passively listening to you. And then it just, like, starts recording when it hears Alexa. But in theory, you have a microphone that's open in your house all the time, all the time forever. And so that capability is there. I feel like if somebody had hacked it, a news story would have been out. But, like, it does seem possible to me. Actually, sometimes all, like, just paranoidly unplug those things.

Really? Yeah. I always thought that you were just sort of like, me, if they're recording me, what are they going to hear? Yeah, I literally the thing that changed my mind was I went into the thing and I just heard little recordings of every time I talked to a robot and it just made me feel a little uncomfortable. Yeah, exactly. I kind of had heard that it did that. And it wasn't until I logged in and actually listened to myself talking to it that I got really creeped out about it. Alex today wants to know with every single person we talked to whether they're, quote unquote, an Alex or a PJ because he thinks that's really important and that most people have thought about it a lot.

So are you an Alex or PJ? I feel like most people probably have thought about it. I have thought about it and I have an answer but I'm not going to tell you because it's mean. Whoa, now we need to know. Yeah, I think so. No, you don't. No, we do. I promise you that we can handle it.

No, y'all have an awesome day. I'm so desperate to know. I'm going to think about this with the rest of my life. Have a great day. Hello? Hello? Hey, who's this? Oh, my God.

I'm right. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm South from Syria. I know it's weird. I'm Syrian, okay? It's not weird. That's not cool that you're calling from Syria. No, I'm like in Turkey right now.

I'm not joking. I don't know. Yeah, no, I know you're not joking. I'm calling you over like Google Hangouts. I don't know what this might. You there? Okay. Okay, you're disconnecting.

No, no, no, we're still here. We're here. You're disconnecting. Just a second. Okay. Okay. Can you hear me? Yes, we can.

Hello. Hello? Hello? PJ? Yeah. Alex. Hi. Can you hear us?

Hey, are you there? Hello? Hello? Hello? Hey, are you there? Hello? Is there a way to, can you Google chat with him? Can you chat?

I mean, numbers are coming in so fast. I don't know how we would do it. Well, can't you see which ones we've, like, connected with? No, because we connect over that phone. Country good for Turkey is 90. Whoa. Hey, we're still here. Don't hang up.

You're back. What's your question? Okay. So, I, like, ever since, like, ninth grade or something, I've been, like, working really hard on my English. I don't know if that's apparent. Your English is great. Your English is amazing.

Oh, thank you so much. And ever since, like, 2016, I've been really working hard and trying to, like, get into college broad. And so towards the end of last year, December of last year, I take. the SAT, and I get a 1540. Holy crap, my God. That's really good. And like in 2016, Trump comes into office, and obviously there's a travel ban, and I'm no longer allowed into the U.S. So, God, I'm really tongue-tight.

Oh, that's okay. Just take your time. We're here. Okay. And so, like, the only option I had. then was Canadian universities. And I tried to register to the best of my ability on the internet. And I just, like, there was, the websites, all of them were so bad. And, like, just, like, hard to actually use? Like, so many problems. Like, for example, my name is in all caps in English, because that's how we do it in Syria. I don't know who decided that. And so, like, on a lot of the, like, websites, I put my name, and they were all like, oh, your name is case sensitive. So you need to capitalize it as it is in your, like, passport.

And I go in there and put it in all caps, because that's the way it is in my passport. And they're like, we can't accept that. And so, like, I literally hit them up. I call them. I call the university, and they're like, We don't know. They're just like, we don't know, flat out. That's like McGill. Oh, yeah. I went to McGill. I had very bad experiences when I needed help with them. You went to it? God damn. Okay. Yeah.

So like I've kind of missed all of my deadlines now. And it's been like these three months that have been super depressing for me. I just don't know what to do. I've been like searching for counselors on the internet. I literally can't find it anyone. And like, I don't know if that's even something that like you said to anything. So yeah, totally. I don't know what I'm doing. Let's try to help. So it sounds like you need somebody, you literally need somebody who can help you navigate the college admissions process. Okay. I mean, it's not like we know that person off hand, but we can, we'll help. Yeah, we'll help. That's fine. Okay. Thank you guys. so much. I'm really sorry that you're going through this. How long have you been in Turkey?

I've been since like 2013. And are you with your family? Yeah, came together. What's your family like? Like what's your mom, dad? Do you have siblings? I have three siblings, all females. That's how I grew up. Younger or older? I'm the youngest kid. And what, like, what's your life like in Turkey right now? Like, where are you talking to us from? I live, I can't go to Ghazi and Tep. I can't go to Istanbul unless I have a permit. And what does it take to be a permit? You have to have either family somewhere else, and they don't always accept that,

or you have to have something like a test or something. Like when I took my SATs, I had to fly out to Ankara. And so what do you do? You're done with school. What are you doing with yourself? I, like, I skipped, I went to school a year earlier. Like I skipped a year

And so yeah I'm done with school now But like I'm most old as a senior Your student And are you working? Not really Alex said that like he was your dad And it's okay that you're not working

I'm not trying to like Yes it's fine that you're not working I was just curious No no no Like the thing is Assyrians were not allowed To work here Regardless if you have like a college

To agree or anything I think recently they instated some sort of process for people to, you know, convert their diplomas, their college diplomas and try to work here. But for now, it's mostly like educational fields and like markets and stuff that get the jobs that can work. But otherwise, no one can do anything. How do people just, like, survive financially? We've just been, like, borrowing money from my grandpa. from my uncle for the past, like, three years, four years. And that's what we've been subsisting off for the whole time.

That sounds really, really, really hard. Yeah. Tim has a question for you. Go ahead. Hey, has it go and sell? Okay, this is a kind of uninformed question, but I'm just really curious. So I live in Berlin, Germany. There's a huge Syrian population there, and I've met a lot of Syrians.

And I'm just curious, is that I don't know. I'm genuinely curious. I don't know. Is that a thing that you guys think about? Is Germany still possible to emigrate to? Or has it, is that become really difficult? We wanted to go at some point back in like 2015. My dad and sister wanted to go to Sweden or something like one of those countries. And basically what you do is you get on a boat and you go all the way there. But obviously it's very dangerous. And a lot of the smugglers are basically. criminals. You might get stolen. You're definitely going to get your stuff stolen on the way there. You might never get there. You might think, whatever, but like my dad and sister were going to go.

The way it works is that once a family member goes there, like your parent, like your dad, he can reunite. And with all of his children, as long as they're under the age of 18. and so my sister was above 18 and she had to go. And so like it was really scary, you know, the days leading up to it. And eventually the day came, they were going. I went to school and I returned and it turns out they hadn't gone. And like right about that time, there was a law that was a, put in place that would prohibit Syrians from traveling between states, between Turkish states

or cities without a permit. And so my dad was on his way to like wherever the city was where they were going to get smuggled and they didn't let him get through. And so he returned and that was that. Did it make you feel disappointed or sad that he wasn't able to make it? Or were you just glad that he was not in harm's way? Obviously, I was comforted that day. But a lot of my friends had gone and they were going to reunite with them. And it's really not good here in Turkey again, no jobs. Yeah, I don't enjoy my stay here.

And so I would have been happy had he, like, gotten there safely and reunited with us there. I see. You know? Yeah, totally. You don't want, like, anyone in heart's way. Do you, what do you do for, like, fun? And... Who do you like to read?

I like, mostly 19th century, 20th century, it was fiction. Damn, do you. I love Joseph Heller. Yeah. Catch 22 is like... Catch 20 is good. It's about war. And the main character is a Syrian, and I'm a Syrian, so representation.

And how, like, what made you start being interested in teaching yourself English and reading books in English? What was that? Ninth grade, I, like, decided to go to a Turkish school. So the deal here is that we all go to, like, Syrian schools. They're like temporary educational centers that are like for refugees solely. But you can choose to go to Turkish schools. And when I went, I got like I'm, again, I told you I skipped a year. I'm smaller than most of the other guys. And I'm like 5'8 right now. Like I'm pretty small. And at the time, I was smaller.

But anyway, but it really was bad. I got, like, beat up a lot. I got bullied a lot, obviously, you know, xenophobia. And so I was like, I kind of reacted instead of trying to learn Turkish. I went to complete other way and just went with English. And I had, like, a notebook with words, a bunch of, like, SAT words, from. like the old SAT. And I just, every day, like, at school is like eight hours, which is like hell.

You completely don't understand anything. You're just sitting there, teachers babbling away, and you just don't know what to do. And so I sat there, you know, memorized as many words that I could. And that was in the beginning. I was, it's not the same thing or anything, but when I was a kid, I got bullied. a lot because I was tiny and had no social skills. And I did the same thing. I would just read books in class just so I didn't have to pay attention to what was actually going on. And I always get caught and get in trouble. I used to skip class. I used to go hide behind the school

building and read books. It was the same thing. And I remain about 5'8 today. So you're not alone. You said you taught yourself English? Yeah, super hard. A lot of people think it's super hard. And what did it, like literally, how did you do it? Um, like, I, I kind of started off on YouTube. What YouTube videos would you watch when you were learning English? Oh, God. Anything. Like, I mean, I remember Good Mythical Morning was a lot of fun.

Like, oh, what? Good mystical morning. Yeah. What is it? You don't know what? No. Wow, you guys. I did it podcast all the internet.

Geez. Yeah, like, 50 million subscribers, dude. So wait, what is it? Good Mythical. It's just like a morning show. Like morning news? No, not. It's like, I don't know.

They do all sorts of click beta YouTube stuff, but I don't know. Oh, yeah, I'm looking. Like, today they did the March Milkness, Take Test, Taste Test, how'd these cereals? I'm really surprised you don't know. But anyway, I mean, YouTube kind of has, like, the easiest, like, generally the language that is used is not really complex. and so I started off of that. And then I moved on to podcasts, which usually tackle, like,

stuff that's a bit more complicated and not necessarily, though. And then I just started reading books and rest of history. So you don't really speak English really well, but you don't speak Turkish too well? My Turkish is like, I mean, it's average for people who live here, but it's not good enough to have, like, even a basic conversation. Do you meet people there who speak English? No, not at all.

Never? But, like, I mean, no. People really don't speak English here. Since they don't speak English and your Turkish isn't great, do people not know that you're really smart? I kind of hit it from people. I didn't want people to know for some reason. Like, people generally use, like, English especially.

just to like show off and like and so like I don't want to be that guy uh and so you know like it wasn't until 11th grade that people knew that I spoke English I like had a one-on-one with my English teacher and we just faced off in terms of who knows like more vocab words that is so nerdy and so cool who won I did like it's good work do you remember like the word that you won on Like, I wasn't the one coming up with them. My friends, like, were asking me. And, like, one of the words was, like, a uvula or something. Like, someone literally pointed at their uvula, and I was like, oh, that's a uvula. And my teacher didn't know it.

And so that's one specific example I remember. And, like, that was the only time. I mean, people at that point did, like, start actually, like, complimenting me on my existence. Before that, people, like, thought I was just used to. place basically. I don't know. That's kind of nice, a little bit. Yeah, I got yeah, like 11th grade

was like I peaked that year. Sal, Alex all day has been asking people... Come on, dude. It's really important to him to know this apparently for some reason. It's not important to me to know this. He said he wants to know with pretty much everybody on Earth whether they think

they're a PJ or an Alex. And he thinks that's like a a foundational thing. I'm more of an Alex. Oh, no. Sorry for that. Boom. I mean, he's five eight.

He's five eight. He just wrecked me. Thank you, Sal, we're the same height. Come on. How tall are you, PJ? Uh, I think you're like 5-11. Yeah, you're around six feet.

I can't. I'll walk around on my knees. God damn it. All right, we're going to try to figure out if we can help you, okay? Yep. Okay, thank you so much, guys. Yeah.

I love you so much. I'm both an Alexana, PJ. No, no. Come on, you're an Alex. You're an Alex. It's okay. Everyone has to be one. All right, take care.

Love you. Bye. Bye. So we recorded that conversation last Thursday. Since then, we found somebody in the McGill admissions department who's looking over Sal's transcripts and helping him navigate their system. McGill's student-run Syrian Student Association is also helping out. If you are one of our listeners and you work in college admissions, in North America, and you want to help out, just send us an email, reply all at Kimletmedia.com.

Obviously, the problem of Sal is having is way, way broader than just him. There's tons of smart Syrian kids who have been displaced, who want to go to college, and it's very hard for them to get there. If you're interested in this, we found two organizations that seem to be working on it. There's one called J-U-S-O-O-R. It's a group of Syrian expats who are trying to help kids find opportunities. The other one is the Institute of International Education, I-I-E. They have a program called peer where they tried to find scholarships and opportunities and connect them with refugee students. Sal said he would keep us updated, so if there's more news with him, we'll let you know. And finally, just thank you to everybody who called or who wrote in. It was fun to

ineptly try to solve your problems. Thanks. Repai, all is hosted by me, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman. We're produced by Shruthi, Pinnamini, Fia Bannon, Damiano Marquetti, Anna Foli, Jessica Young, and Emmanuel Jochi. Our show is edited by Tim Howard. We were mixed by Rick Kwan and Kate Polinsky. Back checking by Michelle Harris. Our intern is Christina Ayale de Josa. Special thanks this week to Jackie Kinyonez. Our theme song is by the mysterious breakmaster cylinder. Our ad music is by Build Build Buildings. Matt Lieber is road trip weather. You listen to our show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in two weeks.