Hey there, this episode contains just the tiniest bit of salty language.

Okay, here's the show.

Karim Shaheen is a journalist, lives in Montreal,

but he carries around in his pocket a sort of window to a world thousands of miles away.

Syria.

You know, if you spend so many years covering the conflict,

the information kind of comes to you.

Eventually, it's hard to sort of disconnect yourself from what's going on.

This window, it's his phone.

It's somewhat upsetting actually because you scroll through your phone and you're looking

through pictures of, you know, you and your wife or you and your kid,

or your cats and between there are pictures of, you know, dead children.

Back when he was reporting in Syria, what he did for five years,

Karim's phone was his Swiss Army knife.

There was an app to warn him of incoming warplanes and encrypted messaging meant he could

get voice memos right from the front line.

You know, towards the end of these stages, you get messages from doctors and activists

and people you've been in contact with on the ground telling you, you know,

that they might not be able to speak to you again because they might,

they might die in the next few hours.

Now that Karim is so far away, having his phone buzzing around in his pocket,

it's like a constant retort to the world around him.

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