Reply All - #88 Second Language

Episode Date: February 9, 2017

A new Yes Yes No, plus Sruthi meets her first fully-functional cyborg. Further Reading Norm Kelly's Twitter Eric Valor's Website Eric's non-profit Sciopen Research Group Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldman. And I'm PJ Vow. Welcome once again to yes, yes, no, the segment on our show where our boss Alex Bloomberg fires up his old 386. What a nerdy burn. Modem dials into AOL. And it goes, you got mail. And then he's like, I don't understand this.

Why don't you guys explain this email I got to me? What have you got for us? All right. So I've got, first of all, it's a little bit, like the internet is confusing me less than normal,

which I'm not sure, I'm not sure what that's about. I think I know what it's about. We've been talking about this. We've been talking about this. There's such a convergence, for once, everybody is always talking about the same thing,

which is basically like Trump with like a brief little interregnum of like Super Bowl, which is pivoted back to Trump, which means that like, if you don't understand it, it's always just like Trump says something you haven't heard yet.

Right. Exactly. Yeah, he has like really sort of gotten us all out of our little micro habitats on the internet. It's one channel now. It's really weird. Yeah. That being said, there are still things that I've come across that I don't understand. So here's one. This is a treat from somebody named Powerful A-U-R-A. A-U-R-A. I follow them. Yeah. That's Felix Biderman. He's been on the show before. All right. Well, Powerful ORA has a tweet that goes like this. Bad news, everyone. Norm Kelly, the 95-year-old Toronto politician who tweets Shoes Look Like a Fam, was just convicted of genocide. That's a good tweet. Wait, Alex Goldman, do you understand this tweet?

Yeah, I'm a solid no on this. Alex Bloomberg, do you understand this tweet? No. PJ Vo, do you understand this tweet? I sure do. Take it away, man. Oh, it feels good. Okay. Okay, so there is this city councilor in Toronto named Norm Kelly.

and the weird thing about Norm Kelly is that Norm Kelly is an internet celebrity he is I think 500,000 Twitter followers and he has like a very particular way of using the internet so he's kind of like he's like

an older gentleman but it's kind of like if you somehow went through like some weird like yes yes no portal and came out speaking constant fluid internet all the time so he makes lots of jokes that are like drenched in internet slang

or drenched in like African-American vernacular slang. He's really into Drake. At one point he like tried to start beef like Norm Kelly, the city councilor in Toronto, tried to start beef with like, who was the rapper that Drake was beating with the Philly guy?

Meek Mill. Meek Mill. He was like him and Meek Mill were actually like yelling at each other on Twitter. Let me give you a norm. Get out of here. Yes. Hold on.

It's so strange. It's truly the strangest thing. Okay, so he posted Forbes Hip Hop Cash King's 2015 list which includes Drake at number three

and then he tweeted where you at Meek Mill 60,000 retweets Wait and who is this in disguise like Let me show you him It will help everything

This is Norm Kelly Wow Can you describe him for us Alex Bloomberg? He looks like He looks like a 1980s sitcom dad Yeah, like he might be your driving instructor

and he would smell like coffee. Yeah. He looks like he looks like a sort of an older more haggard Greg Keneer. Yeah. Here, you know, this is when Meek Mill and Drake first started beaving. He said,

you're no longer welcome in Toronto at Meek Mill 123,000 retweets. Or like, Meek Mill criticized Drake because Drake supposedly uses ghostwriters. And so then Meek Mill put out this track called Want to Know. and Norm Kelly tweeted

this is the reason people hire ghostwriters hashtag we didn't want to know 76,000 yeah wow it's really strange and it's awesome it's kind of like I think

the thing that people mostly really like him and with anybody who there's like a there's a half-life to enjoying anybody on the internet where they're like a hero for a day and then somebody finds out like something problematic about them and by the next day they hate them like Ken Bone was like a meme for 10 seconds.

Then like... Oh, Ken Bone was the guy who was in one of the debates and everybody loved him because he... He stood up and was just... It was like he was very socially awkward. Yeah, he was just like this really... Then you just, your heart went out to him and he was like stammered through his question for the candidate

and like it was very... He was very heartwarming and everybody loved him. And his name was Ken Bone. His name was Ken Bone. And then in very short order, the world found his Reddit posting history and he posted some pretty sketchy stuff. Right.

And the whole thing is just... just like to take it back to this tweet, the joke they're making is that you can never love anybody on the internet because they will immediately disappoint you in some way. Right. And so if you look at the actual text of it, bad news everyone, Norm Kelly, the 95-year-old Toronto politician who tweets, quote, shoes look like a fam, smiley, crying emoji, which is convicted of genocide. It's like, oh, the avuncular Twitter Canadian politician killed a nation of people. Got it. Yeah. And then the other thing that I think is going on, so in the person who wrote the tweet, they, they, they, like, imagine that Norm Kelly is saying, quote, shoes look like a fam.

That doesn't mean anything. Like, that's an example of someone trying to use slang and just saying, like, nonsense. Right. I think this person in particular is maybe not super charmed by Norm Kelly. Like, I think he perhaps finds Norm Kelly's use of youthful black slang as a older white Canadian politician, maybe disingenuous. Okay. I got it. Are you ready to have it back? This is a yes is no quickfire. Yeah. Bring us to yes, yes, yes. All right.

So the tweet, once again, powerful aura tweets, bad news everyone, Norm Kelly, the 95-year-old Toronto politician who tweets, quote, shoes look like a fam, laughing from crying emoji, was just convicted of genocide. So the tweet is in reference to Norm Kelly, who I now know is a Toronto City Councilman, who stands hard for Drake and against Meek Mill, but sometimes doesn't get the lingo exactly right as evidenced by the tweet, shoes look like a fam. And then, but, but basically everybody loves because doggone and he's trying and, and like he's on the right side. But it, it imagines a future when he's 95 years old and he gets convicted of genocide.

And it's a tweet that is commenting on the seemingly inevitable half-life of internet. What is it the half-life of, of like, of our ability, of like, of anybody to stay good. Yes. On the internet. Nothing good can stay. Nothing good can stay. All right. So we're at yes, yes, yes. But I feel like we haven't answered what is probably the most essential question, which is like, why did a 75-year-old city councilman from Toronto insert himself in the middle of like a huge rat beef between meekmill and Drake? Right.

That is a very normal question to have about this. I have no idea. Alex Goldman. PJ vote. You ruined our yes-as-no on Monday? By asking the tough questions? That I didn't have an answer for. I stood about it on Tuesday.

Mm-hmm. Wednesday morning, I realized that you were right. Ooh, this is a rare admission. Yes. It was not a complete yes-yes, yes. And so I called Norm Kelly's office. Really? Really.

Yo. Hey, is this Norm Kelly? It is. Hey, this is PJ Vote. Thanks for talking. Oh, it's my point. pleasure. Where are you right now? I'm in the center of the universe, city of Toronto. So yeah, I was just wondering, like, how did all this happen? I began tweeting to show that an old dog

like me could learn new tricks and that the chief executive office of the city was cool and current. Uh-huh. And so do you, I mean, I feel like part of what people like about you is that they do not expect a Canadian city counselor to talk in a way that seems so drenched in like hip-hop culture? So how did that happen? Well, in order to make sure that I knew the millennial generation, I did some research into hip-hop culture. What did that research look like? I mean, were you Googling, you know, like rap slang? Were you on Urban Dictionary? Was it, were you watching movies?

Like, how did you do it? I did a little bit of everything, even went to the library and got some books out. Really? Yeah, I loved it. Okay. So to understand what I think Norm was up to with this plan, you need to know, first of all, that Norm loves the city of Toronto, like, really loves it. It's all he really wants to talk about.

And at the time that he was deciding to get on Twitter and to behave unusually on Twitter, Toronto was kind of the laughing stock of the Internet. The reason Norm was de facto mayor was because Rob Ford, the old mayor, had been this huge international embarrassment. Right. He had been caught smoking crack while in office. Videos had circulated of him saying outrageously racist, homophobic things. He was painting Toronto in his own image, which was extremely unflattering.

And so Norm gets on Twitter, and he starts talking instead about the other famous Tarantonian, Drake. He's the most accurate personification of modern Toronto. He's young, he's multicultural, and he's talented. And I think that sums up this city, as it's emerged over the last few decades, accurately and persuasively. And when you say that, like, were you consciously thinking, Drake is a person who should represent the city,

and this is the small thing you do? Yep, absolutely. Really? Yeah. Well, you know, when I last saw Drake at the Air Canada Center, a basketball game, and he's the ambassador for the Raptors, as I approached him, he was talking with someone, and as I approached him, he looked up and saw me,

and I go, six God. And he replies, Sick Dad. And have a big hug. Okay. So I talked to him about that. He basically, like, talking to him,

I kind of forgot how crazy the fact of his Twitter account is. And he just started making a lot of sense. And it was almost like, oh, the thing you're doing is, it's just some smart tourism board outreach or whatever. And then I remembered that he also chose to start a fight with Meekmel. And so I asked about that. Well, I innocently entered the battlefield, the hip-hop battlefield when Meek was dissing Drake.

I said to him, you're not welcome in Toronto. And Meek took umbrage at that, and he came back at me. And then I, you know, I'm a Canadian kid that grew up playing hockey. If you're going to body me, expect to be bodied back. So that is why Norm Kelly picks Twitter fights with Meekmel because he likes a fight. Oh, one more thing. Uh-huh. Before we hung up, I read him the yes-as-no tweet, the tweet about him.

And? Well, he was like, he was very quiet because it is a tweet that is like sort of dissing him. Yeah, not only that, but it's like, in 20 years, Norm Kelly will commit genocide. Yeah. So long pause. And then he was like, huh. And I started to explain to me. He's like, I get it. I think it's kind of clumsy. Oh, shots fired.

Yeah. Oh, what do you got to say about that, Felix? Next great Twitter, me. Coming up after the break, Shuthy interviews a cyborg. Welcome back to the show. So last month, I reported a story about ALS, which is this terrible disease, which essentially just robs you of your body piece by piece. piece. It's like your leg stop working, your arm stop working, you can't use your mouth to eat or to speak. So while reporting the story, I met several ALS patients and they were all different,

but they all felt the exact same way about this disease. Like they were being pulled further and further away from the world. Since that story came out, though, I've kept talking to this one patient. and he just describes it differently. For him, it's like the disease has pushed him further into the world. And the more we've talked, it's made me question literally what it means to be a person, which is big, and I'm going to get to it. But first, let me tell you about him. His name is Eric Valor, and back in the early 2000s, he was living in Santa Cruz.

had a job. He loved. He was an IT specialist at this big car company. He was a huge surfer, would surf all over the world with his friends. There are all these videos. It looks like the swell drop a little bit, and we're actually sort of happy. You can see this tall, lanky guy who's just so at ease with himself. You see him just like taking these giant waves. That was a big one. And then in 2005, when Eric was 36, he found out that he found out that he had ALS. The disease hit him hard and fast. Within three years, he was almost fully paralyzed, and he had to have this surgery called to tracheotomy to keep him from choking to death.

So one day, in the summer of 2008, doctors put him under, and about an hour later, Eric woke up. He was looking right at the ceiling, and he couldn't move his neck. He couldn't move his body. he could feel this bandage on his neck where doctors had cut a hole into his throat to put this tube into him. And it was going into this machine that he couldn't see, but he could hear the hiss of it. It was the ventilator pushing oxygen into his lungs. He was just completely paralyzed, like just trapped inside his body. Except the ALS had left Eric one tiny, escape route. His eyes. And this is the crazy thing about ALS. Nobody knows why this is. But for most

ALS patients, the disease shuts down every muscle in your body that you can move except your eyes. And so, Eric uses just his eyes to communicate with the world. Here's how it works. A technician sets up a computer with an infrared camera, a couple feet in front of him. that tracks the motion of his eyeballs. And there's a virtual keyboard which he's looking at, and any time his eyes rest on a key for 0.3 seconds, it counts as a click. That's one letter. And then his eyes move a millimeter to the left, another letter.

And this is how he spells a word. And that's how he was able to do this interview with me. And so first off, I want to say, I mean, you must be the fastest typist in the world. It's been really incredible communicating with you. I am a rather high-functioning person with ALS. Yeah, to say the least. So can you tell me when you first got the IGA software,

was it harder to use than it is now? Like, I imagine, like maybe it was frustrating in the beginning. The learning curve can be quite steep for most, but I am a bit of a freak. The technician who brought me the system went out to his car to retrieve a tool, and by the time he came back, I had already configured a few settings and was installing my desired email client. He was flabbergasted.

He was obviously used to senior citizens who had no experience with computers, not some 38-year-old punk who had been intimately working with computers since he was 12. So we've edited this conversation, basically took out all the clicks because as good as Eric is at using his software, what you just heard took several minutes for him to type up. But for Eric, you know, the time it takes to communicate, he does not mind because it's his lifeline. Without the technology, I likely would have taken the morphine train to Durrnapp Town. But I long ago realized that the essence of my being, that which makes me a person, Is my mind not my body? I like to call myself the world's first fully functional cyborg.

Can you explain to me what that means? Like, what's the feeling of being a cyborg? Because in my head, I'm imagining, like, I have these images, which I'm sure are totally wrong, of a perfect brain in a glass jar. Sure I can. Tape your mouth shut and tie your arms and legs to a chair while wearing a rigid cervical brace.

That's how I feel with my computer off. But with my computer on and functioning, I firmly believe I am even more powerful now than when I was healthy and moving. Like Professor Stephen Hawking famously said, my body is a prison but my mind is free. Knowing what I know about Eric, this was really surprising to me. He spends all day propped up in a bed, lives with his mother, and requires. requires 24-7 care. And so I asked Eric, how, like, what does it mean that your mind is more free? And his answers got pretty trippy. We are not our physical bodies. Our physical bodies are merely life support and communication

manifestation systems along with vessels for procreation of the species, homo sapiens, and whatever we may later evolve into. Ourselves, our beings, are just the collection of the electrochemical processes in our brains called thought. These thoughts over a lifetime and their shifts in focus make up who we are. So it's not that my physical body was holding me back so much as my existence at the time was focused on my family and my career and how much I enjoyed what I was doing. But, as so often happens, life threw me quite the nasty curveball which completely changed my focus. Rather than surrender I used it as an opportunity for learning and improvement.

And here's what he means by that. Eric has a very busy life. He's a night owl, so usually he wakes up a little late. My daily routine usually starts around 1230 in the afternoon when my first shift caregiver gives me range of motion and stretching exercises. He then turns on my computer and initiates the calibration process so the computer knows where I am looking. I then begin my workday.

Eric's mom told me that his workday essentially involves Eric being a volunteer reference librarian for anyone on the internet who needs it. He'll visit all these different web forums. Working with people from all over the world who have ALS or other diseases that have problems with their computers. And so Eric remotely goes into their computers and fixes their problem or helps. He's like tech support. Oh, yeah, he's totally tech support. Oh, yes. Once an information technology professional. Always an information technology professional.

Eric is also one of the top writers on this Q&A site called Cora, where he answers questions like, can a piece of code feel pain? How did Stephen Hawking have children? Or how can I come up with the new ice bucket challenge? His answer, you can't. He's also on Twitter a lot lately, basically shouting at the government. He drives me insane with his politics.

You know, he's very abrasive with it. But here's the thing that Eric is most passionate about. For the last eight years, he has, using only his eye muscles, taught himself neurology and biology to the point where he's turned himself into this one-man research lab. In 2012, he started this research nonprofit that he's using to look for a cure. We have three novel molecules in the pipeline, including one which is especially exciting. A protein, I asked him to explain how it works, and he says it's insanely complicated. The pathway is called necroposis, a much more recently understood cousin to the more familiar apoptosis. Basically, there seems to be this very particular way that cells die in people with ALS,

and it requires this one protein, and Eric is trying to. target that protein to see if he can stop the cells from dying. And Eric is really optimistic. He feels like it might not be this one, but there's going to be some treatment out there that is going to work. And he believes he is going to get his body back. That determination gives me the strength to keep going. It's just like surfing dangerously large waves. You have to make the determination that you will make the wave safely. and with style, and that if caught inside you will punch your way back out without drowning. But I'm just curious if there are any moments where you do feel frustrated.

Like, and if you do, is there anything? Like, what do you do then? In my few moments of downtime, I reflect on future plans. The trick is to keep occupied and not let your mind drift to the dark places. I have a lot of earlier experience with that and learned how to avoid it so I do. And so like what are the conversations that you would have with yourself back then? It was over a decade of deep depression. Before I understood the true values in life, I was very self-defeating.

But that is behind me and I prefer not to dwell on it. I asked Eric if he would send me a recording, some recording, of his voice before he had ALS. And he said basically he just doesn't have anything. And he said, you know, my voice right now, it basically sounds like my old voice. And I realized, like, Eric can't control his body. But what he's done, more so than anybody I've ever talked to,

is taken control of his mind. He's like a drill sergeant. And the only time he lets his guard down is when he sleeps. I do dream frequently of surfing. Often the dreams are post-A-L-S where I am back charging with my brother Scott and our good friend Dawn. But I don't dwell on such dreams because nothing good comes of that. Rather, I take them like a fun movie than get on with the business of living and doing something useful with my life. You can find Eric on Twitter at Surf Iving, S-U-R-F-I-B-I-N-G, and

And his nonprofit is called Sci Open Research Group. Shruthy Pinnaminani is one of the producers for our show. Reply All is hosted by PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. We're produced by Shruthy Pinamennini, Fia Benin, Chloe Prasinos, and Damiano Marquetti. We're edited by Tim Howard and Jorge Just. Fact-checking from Tom Cody. Production assistance this week from Sangita Ryasam. We're mixed by Rick Kwan.

Special thanks this week to Peter Smith, who co-reported our original story. about ALS, and thanks also to Emily Kennedy. Our theme songs by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, and our ad music is by Build Buildings. Matt Lieber is driving with the windows down, singing your favorite song as loud as you can. You can find more episodes of the show at iTunes.com slash Reply All or wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is Replyall.Diams. We're taking next week off to do some reporting, so we'll see you in two weeks. Thanks for listening.

Alexa. Play Yakutty Sacks.