As of late, Endless Thread co-host Ben Brock Johnson has been obsessed with a rock in Wyoming, a lot like the protagonist of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But you won't find Ben in the kitchen, making a replica of the rock out of mud and chicken wire. Instead you'll find him and co-host Amory Sivertson in this episode, traversing Reddit and TikTok and YouTube and Wyoming to find out why hundreds of thousands of people have been drawn to a monolith that has so many names and meanings....
Aug 18, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Two years ago, he didn’t even know slime molds existed. Now, he may be the internet’s most famous slime savant. Co-hosts Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson take a walk in the park with Regular Slime Guy. Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson are the co-hosts. (Photo by Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Aug 11, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast "To avoid crowds, visit areas that are less crowded." These comically obvious, wise words come from the Twitter account — ahem, X account — of the National Park Service, who has been hitting it out of the park lately (get it?) with its social media content and reaping viral rewards. Who is behind this material? And why has a more than hundred year old government agency chosen to let its hair down on social media? Amory and Ben talk to the National Park Service's lone social media ranger, Matt Tu...
Aug 04, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast If there is an OG meme in which a human is the star, Scumbag Steve is it. He spread across the internet like wildfire in 2011 as a universal representation of dudes who are the worst. And, like any person grappling with immediate internet fame, Blake Boston — the man behind Scumbag Steve — tried to capitalize: merch, rap songs, public appearances. But the full story of what happened to Blake — and his family — has never been told. The Scumbag Steve meme became a bargaining chip in a custody batt...
Jul 28, 2023•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast In times like these, you've got to take joy wherever and however you can get it. Amory and Ben swap unexpected sources of joy they've bumped into recently — from a goblin-themed Reddit post, to the scariest toe talons on the internet, to a funky 1980's little-known bop about going to the beach on Massachusetts' North Shore.
Jul 26, 2023•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Imagine if an explosion in California was so loud that it could be heard in New York City. This is the story of a real event that was just as loud — the loudest sound ever recorded in human history. This sound ripped across oceans in 1883, reaching people 3,000 miles away. Infrasonic pressure waves circled the globe four times. News of its destruction traveled through the early internet, the telegraph system, and altered the course of scientific history. In this episode of Endless Thread, we rec...
Jul 24, 2023•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast The first documented bar joke was copied onto a clay tablet 4,000 years ago in the ancient language of Sumerian. Scholars have translated it, but the meaning remains lost. After the Twitter account @DepthsOfWiki posted the joke in March, thousands of people attempted to decipher it to no avail. Yet, as cryptic as the bar joke may be, it offers clues into humor’s role in human civilizations and raises questions about when humor — and its sibling laughter — first emerged. In this episode, the seco...
Jul 17, 2023•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast What makes the world’s first documented bar joke funny? No one knows. In a tweet that garnered thousands of responses in March, the Twitter account @DepthsOfWiki posted about a 4,000-year-old proverb written on a clay tablet. The line, which experts believe is a joke from the ancient civilization of Sumer, starts with the set-up, “A dog walks into a tavern.” But the punchline has left scholars and online commenters scratching their heads. The joke’s meaning has been lost, and finding it could re...
Jul 14, 2023•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this summer-y episode of Endless Thread, Ben and Amory take a leap of faith (or do they?) to the depths of an upstate New York swimming hole with a legend surrounding it that's almost as shadowy as exact it's location.
Jul 07, 2023•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast “Which one of you freaks hijacked the south Boston green space google maps for your furry photo shoot?” Earlier this year, a Redditor was trying to find the person who uploaded pictures of himself posing in a dog mask and rubber suit to this location in Google Maps. But he's no furry. He's a pup. There's a difference, we learned, after speaking to the subject of these photos. Take a walk on the kinky side in this episode that explores the origins of puppy play and how the internet and the pandem...
Jun 30, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Reddit is restricting the use of third-party apps. More than 8,000 subreddit communities shut down in protest — including r/Blind, which says the change will drastically reduce accessibility. In this special episode, co-host Ben Brock Johnson speaks with two moderators of r/Blind about their concerns. Credits: This episode was produced by Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell. Mixing and sound design by Matt Reed. Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson are the co-hosts. (Image credit: Getty/Johner I...
Jun 28, 2023•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Since the creation of deepfakes in 2017, the AI-powered technology that swaps faces into videos has become commonplace, particularly in pornography. Using someone's image without their consent to create porn can have damaging effects, emotionally and physically. But no federal law criminalizes the creation or sharing of non-consensual deepfake porn in the United States. Endless Thread co-hosts Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson speak with producer Dean Russell about deepfake law and the movem...
Jun 23, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Since the pandemic, foraging has exploded in popularity. Younger generations are embracing (or romanticizing) the great outdoors with trends like #cottagecore and #vanlife. But our Endless Thread team decided to learn the do's and don'ts of foraging from someone who learned how to forage since childhood — not as a trend, but as a way of life. A special thanks to Soul Fire Farm for letting us visit in Albany, NY.
Jun 16, 2023•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast r/randonauts is a fast-growing community of Redditors who use random, quantum-generated coordinates to go on real-life adventures. But what happens when those random coordinates lead you straight to a grisly crime scene? We revisit an episode that took Ben and Amory on their own random adventures back in 2020.
Jun 09, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week on Endless Thread, host Ben Brock Johnson and producer Grace Tatter look at a meme inspired by supermodel Bella Hadid's call to compliment each other on attributes other than physical appearance, and ask what really makes for an authentic compliment.
Jun 01, 2023•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the aftermath of the Civil War's Battle of Shiloh in 1862, something strange happened. Some soldiers' wounds started to glow. Stranger still, those with glowing wounds seemed to have better rates of survival. In 2001, a teenage Civil War buff embarked on a science project to explain this so-called "Angel's Glow."
May 26, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Can you have an orgasm from listening to music? Can you legally own more than six dildos in Texas? Endless Thread digs into several sexy questions that have taken over the internet. Note: This episode may not be suitable for children. Credits: This episode was produced and hosted by Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson. Additional production by Dean Russell. Mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski.
May 19, 2023•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Once upon a time, in a magical land of Oklahoma, fairy Jasmine LaFleur wanted to create a hashtag to unite Black fairies all across the land. And she did. Since 2021, on the second Saturday of May, Black fairy enthusiasts have united around #BlackFaeDay to show the world that Black fairies are real, and that there's space for them online and off. In this episode of Endless Thread, we look into #BlackFaeDay, and how important it is to those who celebrate. And what we find isn't a hashtags to rich...
May 12, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, we have two stories about etymology. What can words teach us about culture, trade, memory, and the world around us? First up, which “orange” came about first: the fruit or the color? We also discuss the history of the term “bucket list” — a saying that is so embedded in our culture, we forget that it was only formally coined 16 years ago.
May 05, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Do you ever listen to birds singing catchy little melodies and wonder - wait a second, do they know music theory? Can they sing in thirds and fifths? Half steps and whole steps? Do they have perfect pitch? Amory and Ben fly into r/AskScience to explore the question of whether or not our feathered friends are, indeed, musical in the way we human animals think about the term. And Ben turns to the subreddit for theories on why our windshields are no longer splattered with bugs....
Apr 28, 2023•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast What if the internet was only available most of the time? This week, Endless Thread presents an episode of Outside/In — a podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio — about a man in Barcelona who is trying to make the material infrastructure behind the internet as visible and low tech as possible, by building a solar-powered website.
Apr 21, 2023•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the days after the 2013 Boston bombing, an online hunt for the perpetrators falsely accused Brown University student Sunil Tripathi. Police later discovered that Tripathi, who had been showing signs of depression, had died by suicide. Endless Thread revisits his story — one of family and mental health — on the 10th anniversary with documentarian Neal Broffman and Tripathi's sister, Sangeeta Tripathi. Editor’s note: This story mentions suicide. You can reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline tol...
Apr 14, 2023•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Our intrepid sound designer, Matt Reed — musician/composer extraordinaire —recently became a dad. He picked up a Glo Worm for his baby son, Sam. It's a plush musical baby toy made by Hasbro that's been around for decades. It plays standard, well-known lullabies like "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "Frère Jacques," etc. "Straight hits," as host Ben Brock Johnson says in this episode. "Straight hits." But there's one melody on the toy that was a complete unknown to Matt. It's in a minor key, it's ...
Apr 07, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast What do livable and walkable urban environments have to do with "the real life Hunger Games"? And why are people in Oxford, England and elsewhere coming out in droves to protest seemingly innocuous traffic restrictions? On this episode of Endless Thread, co-hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson explore one of the strangest conspiracy theories circulating today: the 15-minute city.
Mar 31, 2023•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast On a sunny day in March 2020, researchers in South Africa discovered the bodies of two giraffes. From what they could tell, the giraffes had died a few days earlier. But the cause was a mystery. To understand what happened, producer Dean Russell turned to the subreddit AskScience. He discusses his findings with Endless Thread co-hosts Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson. Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mixing and sound design by Matt Reed. Amory Sivertson and Be...
Mar 24, 2023•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why did Jacob Wideman murder Eric Kane? In 1986, the two 16-year-olds were rooming together on a summer camp trip to the Grand Canyon when Jacob fatally — and inexplicably — stabbed Eric. That night, Jacob went on the run, absconding with the camp’s rented Oldsmobile and thousands of dollars in traveler’s checks. Before long, he turned himself in and eventually confessed to the killing — although he couldn’t explain what drove him to do it. It would take years of therapy and medical treatment be...
Mar 23, 2023•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Evan Kail is a wise-cracking antique dealer and TikToker. Last September, his world turned upside down when one of his videos ignited an international media frenzy. In his words, the TikTok created a "perfect storm." The subject of the video? A photo album from WWII which Evan believed contained photographs of the Nanjing Massacre — a horrific episode during Japan's invasion of China in 1937. This episode is about historical memory, why the Nanjing Massacre is still an incredibly sensitive topic...
Mar 17, 2023•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast We thought Endless Thread fans would want to hear this trailer for a new podcast from WBUR. Violation tells the story of two families bound together by an unthinkable crime. It explores America's opaque parole system and asks: How much time in prison is enough? Who gets to decide? And, when someone commits a terrible crime, what does redemption look like? Listen to the trailer and if you like what you hear, head over to the Violation feed wherever you get your podcasts and hit subscribe so you'l...
Mar 15, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last fall, freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill got a new neighbor: an owl. What wasn't clear was whether the owl was trying to befriend them, or catch them. Endless Thread host Ben Brock Johnson and producer Grace Tatter talk about how the owl gained online campus fame, and get a surprise update from the person who knows the owl best.
Mar 10, 2023•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's been eight months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and more people are relying on Reddit for help accessing abortion services than ever. Endless Thread revisits r/auntienetwork and looks at how it and other online communities are trying to fill the widening gaps in abortion access. Credits: This episode was written and produced by Grace Tatter. Mixing and sound design by Matt Reed. Ben Brock Johnson and Grace Tatter are the co-hosts.
Mar 03, 2023•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
