This is Planet Money from NPR.
A couple years ago, my friend PJ Vote started getting these weird text messages on his phone.
You know the ones.
They come from some number you've never seen before, and they ask you some out-of-context question.
Around for dinner today?
Are you still in Boston?
If you answer and tell them it's the wrong number, they'll try to engage you in conversation.
It feels like a scam, but the actual scam part never seems to materialize.
PJ is the host of one of my favorite podcasts.
It's called Search Engine.
Each week, they answer a different question.
Some of them are big and existential.
Some are tiny and hilariously specific.
And with these texts,
PJ got curious about what happens when you do keep these scammy-seeming conversations going.
When you do start to follow the crumbs, one of these texters starts leaving you.
So he called up another journalist who'd also gotten obsessed with figuring out this mystery.
Like...
Who was on the other side of these messages?
And how were they making their money?