WBUR Podcasts. Boston. Good morrow. What does good morrow mean? I'm not sure. Does that mean like. Good day? Or does it mean good tomorrow? Does it mean... It's like I do a circle thing with my hand and I bow deeply to you. Good morrow. Good morrow to you, sir. Or madam. Person. Good morrow to you. Yes. Yeah. Here we are.
I have a story for you. Yep. You got a story for me. Yep. I don't know what you have for me. You don't know what I have for you. It's a mystery. But it's about to be revealed. All right, let's do it. Okay, so I don't know about you, but my social media feeds are filled with rants at the moment. Just joy. They're filled with joy and happiness and everything's perfect and great. Nope. They're filled with rants and specifically political rants about.
you know, human rights, immigration, the economy. But I found a rant on Reddit the other day that was so refreshing because it was about none of that. Okay. And I found it in the home improvement subreddit. Okay. Is this about the TV show or just a general home improvement? Tim Allen is not involved. You're telling me Tim Allen's not involved. No. Do you dabble in that subreddit at all? Not really. I'm more of a YouTube guy when it comes to home improvement, but...
Okay, so a little table setting here. How would you describe your... Your home decor, home design aesthetic. Are you a mid-century modern man? Are you a Scandinavian minimalist? Oh, God. You know, I would say eclectic mid-century modern with a little Bauhaus. No, I'm just kidding. I would say eclectic mid-century modern. parents of seven-year-olds is what i would say okay understandable yeah i'm like i think i'm a cottage core girl no all the way really farmhouse
Rustic. But you don't have the frilly dresses to match. No, no, no. We're talking the home. Okay, all right. No, I don't have the frilly dresses. But like, would an elf live there? Perfect. That's me. Yeah, that is kind of, you do kind of have an elf. situation going on yeah okay yeah um so this particular rant this starts with a post to home improvement from a user who goes by read my thoughts okay And the post just says, are you happy with replacing carpet stairs with wood?
Any immediate thoughts? Are you a carpet man? Well, so again, going back to my parents of seven year olds decor style, what I would say is. I'm generally anti-carpet. I'm like rugs. Yes, sure. But no, I'm not a carpet person. But the thing is, is on stairs when you have little kids. those stairs when you're wearing your socks can be slippery.
And so a couple years ago, we put those little like single stair carpet patches on all the stairs, if that makes sense. Little carplets. Carplets. Yeah, little carplets. Just to make sure that nobody fell down the stairs. Although I do love a get in the sleeping bag and slide down the stairs move, but that's a different story. Oh, God. Anyway. That's bumpy. Go on. Yeah, I remember my niece being at my parents' house, which is...
I think fully carpeted, other than the kitchen. That would be weird. And she was just like, she was young at the time, and she was just going nuts on that carpet. She was so excited because she doesn't have carpet in her own house, and carpet is a kid's dream. Carpet when you're a kid is great. Yeah. Yeah. So someone on this post, the post, oddly enough, was removed by the moderators. This replacing carpet stairs with wood question. For violating a rule of some kind.
Yeah, which not sure which one. But but someone did comment and say, like, just so you know, Reddit tends to hate carpet. So just you're going to get some responses that are pretty anti-carpet. And the rant is. Actually not anti-carpet. Here's the rant. This is from someone they posted. At the time that we're recording this, this was like a few weeks ago. Okay. This user is NathanB131. Okay. And they point out, you know, great comment about the carpet hate.
on Reddit, and then they say, oh god, oh no, I feel a rant incoming, it's building up, can't contain it, go, all caps. removing carpet makes a big difference in sound. How a home sounds makes a big difference in how a home feels. Every design trend is hostile to our ears these days. Same thing for popcorn sealing. Ugh. I'm so in. I'm so in. Okay, here we go. You take me to a restaurant, I'll start yelling about how people be yelling because they're not really yelling.
But there's nothing, there's no fabric in this space. Okay, I'm going to fully unleash Nathan on you. Okay, I think you're going to love this. Me and Nathan are already besties. Same thing for popcorn sealing. It's now seen as dated, so all the trend chasers are aggressively removing it. Everyone forgot why popcorn sealing was a thing. Sure, hiding imperfections in drywall joints is one reason, but the main reason is it diffuses light and sound. Yes.
It makes a space feel softer like a home is supposed to feel. People are paying real money to relentlessly eliminate every sound-absorbing thing in their life, unless it's in their home theater and they tell each other it's great, of all the harmful echo chambers of today. This one is the most ironically literal. They go on to talk about drop ceiling and how, you know, people hate drop ceiling tiles. And he's like, they're called acoustic tiles, you noise fetishist.
He talks about restaurants that fancy restaurants used to surround guests in fabric. Yeah, no longer. Tablecloths absorb sound. People could talk quietly over dinner. Now it's like brushed concrete and like vaulted ceilings. just reverberation madness. He says, now look at the ear assaulting hell we've created in every public and private space. You trend chasers keep doubling down on hard floors, shiny ceilings, exposed ductwork, metal furniture, etc.
and you can all take a long walk off a short pier. My ears hate all of you. Your ears hate you too, but you're too obsessed about what your trend-chasing friends think to realize what you've all done to world peace. We used to be a society, all caps. And he goes on, as for me and my house, I love my carpet and my popcorn ceilings because it sounds sublime. My home is a fortress of peace.
Judge my home for being dated and snicker all you want. In your home, every footstep echoes through your entire house and into your soul. Every time someone sets a cup or plate down, every ear gets a little stab. A child dropping a toy down the stairs is now a heavy metal concert nobody asked for. I have to include this other part because I just, he really goes deep here.
You hang a gather sign in your dining room after your chic remodel. You invite your snobby wine mom friends over to show off your shiny, echoey shrine to fabricated authenticity. Wow. Your fancy gather space sounds like a... sports bar. Everyone is shouting. Everyone thinks everyone else is enjoying themselves.
You sneak off to the bathroom to pop another Xanax, thinking your stress is due to shame of your inferior DIY shiplap while at home. Nah, all your friends are popping Xanax, too, thinking they're also the only ones feeling anxiety today. You all voluntarily turned your homes into torture chambers. I'm not... I love this. I love it. In conclusion, I'm not even going to call you sheep because sheep absorb sound. It's good. It's good.
No disagreement here. We've really screwed this up. I mean, there was a think piece, I think, about this. What have we done to our public spaces? We've made them impossible to navigate for anyone, let alone people with any kind of hearing issue. And we've done that to our private spaces too. So I'm in, I buy it. This is a platform I would vote for.
And if you're listening out there and you're ever a guest on an episode of Endless Thread, we will ask you before we start recording, are you in a room with, do you have curtains you can close? Is there a carpet? I literally ask people all the time. I'm like, is there any fabric where you are? Is there a room that you're in with more fabric? Because you sound like you're in an empty wooden box.
Yeah. So get your curtains, install your drop ceilings, get your, get your plushy rugs and then bring tapestries back. We used to have cool tapestries that told the stories of great feats of- Strength and, you know, bring some tapestries back. Is there a hot take you have on home design or decor that if you were, what's the first thing that you would... Remove or deal breakers. Overhead lighting is whack.
Really? Get rid of overhead lighting. Lamps? You're a lamp man. I mean, I think there are certain areas where overhead lighting can be helpful, like a kitchen sometimes. Overhead lighting is good. But generally speaking, I'm a lamp guy. Overhead lighting. Don't eat it. Well, I'm glad we have this out in the open now.
All right, I got a story for you. You ready? No, I think we should take a quick break first. Oh, fine. We'll take a break. Everybody take a break and put some freaking curtains up or start sewing a tapestry. Yeah, we'll be here when you get back. All right. Go get some popcorn sealing. And on the topic of rants, Emery. Mm-hmm. I am bringing you a post from off my chest, the subreddit off my chest. Working at an escape room has made me a more cynical person.
This is by user Twinners of Gilead, I believe is how you probably pronounce that. Okay. Starts off great. To be clear, it's not because people are dumb. That's the first sentence. Escape rooms are horrible gauges of a person's intelligence, and I wish more people understood that. They're little portals into moon logic escape. where you decode ciphers and spot clues. It's not normal. It's not supposed to be. Have you ever done an escape room, Emery?
I honestly don't know. You know what's weird is I'm one of those people. You're still trying to escape the room. You've been in the room the whole time. I'm one of those people that has vivid enough dreams that sometimes I don't know if I've dreamt. something or if i've actually done it and so i think i've i've had a dream in which i've been in an escape room i don't know if i did it or not wow okay all right a little weird
So maybe is the answer? Okay, probably not. Maybe, maybe, sure. All right. So you know what an escape room is though. It's like live action gaming. You go into the room with a group of people, you have a list of, you know, a bunch of different puzzles and you have to like escape the room. That's the experience that people... are going and getting these days in certain places, right? Okay. So this person... This person works at an escape room.
And they're basically like escape rooms can bring out the worst in people. This person talks about, they say, it's horribly remarkable how often we see families come into this inherently stressful timed group activity who just hate each other. Parents who never should have been married getting into shouting matches over loss.
berating their children because they read something incorrectly or read something incorrectly, kids who just despise their parents, families who fundamentally do not understand each other or who don't want to be there over and over and over. This sounds pretty terrible. If you have to work at a place like this, I get this, right? Yes, and yet, isn't that why people go to an escape room, maybe? Go on.
Like, did you ever have to go to an orientation of any kind, you know, where it's like, we're going to figure out how to work together and we're going to get to know each other better and we're going to break down walls. overcome you know communication barriers we're gonna break it all down so it's like a prescription for a problem more than a um hey let's all have fun together doing this thing
Maybe. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. And I mean, that's not why I would go to an escape room, but I get that like, I can see a scenario where the family with the teenagers or whatever, they're like. you know what we need? We need an escape room. We need to like get in there. Team building. This person says, this person. says they really go off on the parents. You know, fathers who cannot muster a modicum of a shit to give about their family.
They hardly interact, resent other people for having fun, don't grasp their kids wouldn't be as into it as they are. Mothers who say the most insane, degrading things to their daughters so casually. It sounds like the White Lotus. It really does, kind of. Yeah, kids who cry meltdown, feel so isolated. This person says the kids are fine, though. Yes, they can be assholes and have bewildering logic and are messy and noisy and hardly listen, but they're kids.
right? This person understands the kids are kids, right? How rapidly a person's enjoyment can be perforated and diminished by the mere inclusion of the written word. This person writes quite eloquently, I would say. So, you know, I think this person is really, you start to read through this post and you're like, wow, this is a really cynical post. And this person is really depressed with the state of the American family.
we might say. One thing I want to say before we go to the end of this person's post that I experience all the time or I think about often as a parent is that You always have to remember that you're getting a glimpse. Right. Like this family could be like very happy. They could be, you know, very good at working together, very kind to each other all the time, but they might be having a bad moment or a bad day. I think about that with kids on the plane all the time.
I'm unhappy on a plane and I'm seeing a kid on a plane and like kids are not usually on planes. We're seeing them at their worst and we're seeing the parents at their worst because they're on a plane and they're like super uncomfortable and conscious of. everyone else and everything else around them yep so yeah and then people see that and they're like oh god i'm never being a parent and i'm like no it's just being a parent on a plane is hard
And being a parent is hard, but you know what I mean. Yes, I feel you. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think, you know, it's always important to remember when you're in public and you see somebody having a bad time, if you can, to give them grace, right? Because they, you know, you just don't know what's going on in their lives. even if they chose to come to this escape room and they're having a terrible time.
It's important to remember that. And ultimately, I thought this post was just going to be a full on just. rant of bile from this person, but they actually like turn this corner about two thirds of the way through their post. And they say all this to say the negatives constitute about 10% of the total experience. So they like kind of like turn this corner. So often, I get to clock in to a pretend job where I play God over random people and hit switches if they'll enter codes correctly.
I get to see families come together and find a new hobby. Parents get just as jazzed as the children they're chaperoning when the you got it right sound plays. Couples scream and jump and laugh. Kids play and get bewildered by the stagecraft of it all. I see so much emotion in hour-long intervals with other strangers that I feel it has broadened my empathy immeasurably. It is a joyous job.
But the negatives really stick. And I just needed to get those off my chest. But ultimately, it sounds like this is a pretty good job. Yeah. Running an escape room. Depends on how much carpeting and popcorn ceilings are in the escape room. Otherwise, it's an echoey hell of... riddles and traps. Would you be an escape room person? Like, would you be an escape room? You know, I think you'd be pretty good at it. Like, you're theatrical.
Yeah. I mean, are there riddles involved? I really hate riddles. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's riddles and codes and puzzles and that's the whole thing. I mean, I like puzzles. I like word games. I do not like a riddle. Huh. People are like, riddle me this. And I'm like, nope. I will not riddle you that. I will not. I will not. No one has ever said riddle me this in earnest to me.
I don't know. I would try one. I'll try anything, you know? You'll try anything except ripping out the popcorn ceiling. Right. And the acoustic paneling in your house. I actually, we do have some popcorn ceiling upstairs. And I have, you know, not smiled upon it. But after this. I gave it a little, I gave it a little wink this morning. I was like, you know what? You're okay. What part of your life would you put into tapestry? Oh, God.
Maybe like one of our episodes that we've made. Like one of our adventure episodes. The plates. Plates. We could turn plates into a tapestry. Plates would be good. Or like I'd love to see. Glitter would be good. I'd love to see Giedis sewn into. I mean, Giedis is ready to be a tapestry already, just as an image or a set of images. I think so. All those could go on a tapestry. Okay. Well, listeners, if you would like to make a tapestry of one of our episodes, please do get in touch.
Or to design an escape room for us to escape. As long as you promise to let us out and no riddles. Yeah. No riddles. If you want to see me and Amory at each other's throats for approximately 45 minutes, I think we'd be pretty good in an escape room, you and me. What do you think? Yeah, I would happily do an escape room with you. Okay, all right. This episode is its own escape room. Can we make it out? Can we ever get out?
Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. Boston's NPR escape room. Yes. This episode was co-hosted by myself, Ben Brock Johnson, and And Marie Sievertson. Mix and sound design by Paul Vykus, our production manager. The rest of our team is managing producer Samata Joshi, Emily Jankowski, Dean Russell, Frannie Monaghan, and Grace Tatter.
Our show is edited by Meg Kramer. If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, a rant, a popcorn ceiling, a tapestry, an escape room, all of the above, none of the above, send us an email, endlessthread at wbur.org.