One of my favorite reporters is Rukmini Kalamaki.

She covers Islamic terrorism for the New York Times, and she just finds the craziest stories.

Last month she wrote about this Sunday school teacher in Washington who was almost recruited

into ISIS.

Before that, she had the inside story of how a group of hostages who were later executed

by ISIS spent their final months.

She reports on people who are too dangerous to actually visit, and she does it by using

the internet.

I want to know how exactly that works, how she accesses these unknowable worlds.

The day I talked to her, she was on a reporting trip in Iraq.

We connected over Skype.

So I'm sitting at the Sheraton in Dohuk in Iraq.

And what's the Sheraton lobby like in Iraq?

It's very Bosch.

I mean, it's got like, you know, kind of these enormous chandeliers, a geometric aquamarine

carpet.

Is the Wi-Fi good?

It's actually crap.

I'm, you know, like, it's...

The audio quality of this interview is spotty at times.

You can direct all complaints to the Sheraton Dohuk Yelpage.

Anyway, Rukmini says that the moment that changed her life as a journalist happened back

...