Endless Thread
Untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL. Hosted by Ben Brock Johnson & Amory Sivertson.
Episodes
Endless Thread on OnlyFans
Journalist Leon Neyfakh — known for the podcasts Slow Burn, Fiasco, and Backfired — wanted to know more about the massively popular and sprawling online ecosystem of OnlyFans. What are its nearly 400 million users really getting from it, and what can that tell all of us about relationships forged online? To find out, he teamed up with Gracie Canaan, a stand-up comedian and OnlyFans creator. To fi
Leave a message after the beep
Jeremy Rellosa used to watch TV shows and movies from the '90s and revel in how the characters walked around untethered to a smartphone, with no expectations of constant connectivity. So he decided to run an experiment on himself: he'd live for at least two weeks without a smartphone. No Slack. No text messages. No Instagram or WhatsApp. If his friends, family, or boss wanted to reach him, they'd
The Church of Speedrun!
Try reading this description as fast as you can: Ben and Amory zoom through two internet stories connected to speed running, including a look at a mysterious object on Reddit and an online trend directed at the Church of Scientology.
Show notes:
Found in my son’s room (Reddit)
Storming Scientology Buildings: TikTok Trend or Hate Crime? (The New York Times)
What is a ‘Scientology speedrun’
Endless Egg
Some Internet trends are temporary, but eggs are forever. Today, host Ben Brock Johnson serves up a story about a recipe that, according to the people of r/pickled, can't be beat, and producer Kalyani Saxena egg-splores online discourse around Korean mayak eggs, and why it matters which creators get credit for their popularity.
Show notes:
"Been a few years now. Figured I’d share my recipe." (
Manifesting an online rom-com existence
Of all the internet communities in all the world, you walked into ours.
Hosts Ben and Amory pay homage to the magic of chance encounters with producer Grace Tatter. Together, they explore the ways in which the internet fuels random yet delightful meetings between strangers online, from a website where you can impersonate ChatGPT to Craigslist's beloved Missed Connections page.
Show notes:
You
Ben Palmer's Brain
Comedian Ben Palmer set up a fake tip line for reporting immigrants in the United States suspected of not having legal status. He recorded the conversations, and things... got uncomfortable and, in some cases, disturbing. But for a lot of viewers, these calls were surprisingly funny. How does Ben Palmer withstand the awkwardness and maintain his deadpan delivery as he trolls unsuspecting Americans
Endless Thread presents "The Midnight Rebellion"
Introducing The Midnight Rebellion, a new climate fiction podcast from WBUR — a rollicking adventure to a flooded, robot-infested world where you choose what happens.
When Joule Watts-Green steps into her mom’s mysterious machine, she’s swept off to a polluted city of tides. Streets are rivers, “tin-skins” shoot lightning, and everyone eats gooey Algae-Os. To get home, Joule must be brave, clever
Extraordinary vs. Extra Ordinary
Ben and Amory take a hike with producer Grace, following the digital trail of "Ridiculoubs" — a mysterious climber who traverses the world's peaks in striking footwear. Then, Amory celebrates the beauty of daily life with the Dull Women's Club, a Facebook group with nearly 1.6 million members.
Show notes:
"Ridiculoubs" Reviews (Google Maps)
Ridiculoubs (Instagram)
Dull Women’s Club (Faceb
Close Encounters of the Hexagonal Kind
Endless Thread goes to space! First, host Ben Brock Johnson goes deep on radio signals of unknown origin, with an assist from real-life radio astronomer and Reddit MVP Yvette Cendes, aka, Andromeda321. Then, producer Kalyani Saxena takes Ben down the metaphorical black hole of Saturn's hexagonal storm, a massive vortex twice the width of the Earth that's inspired internet conspiracy theories every
A Beige New World
What's your favorite color? If you ask the algorithm, the answer is probably beige. The internet loves neutrals. Aesthetic coffee shop videos feature white walls and minimalist decor. Influencers film from houses decked out with all the beige fixings. When you shop online, you'll be presented with products in a wide range of bland colors — from eggshell, to taupe, to... slightly darker taupe.
So
How Afroman turned lemons into lemon pound cake
When you think of rapper Afroman, chances are his early 2000s hit song "Because I Got High" is already playing in your mind. More than two decades later, his music has once again broken containment. Host Ben Brock Johnson and Producer Grace Tatter dig into how Afroman turned a police raid and defamation trial into another moment of internet virality.
Show notes:
Afroman surveillance footage (I
Rewind: Digging Deep with TikTok's "tunnel girl"
In this throwback from the Endless Thread archives, hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson revisit an episode from 2024.
In 2022, a TikTok creator who identifies herself as "Kala" began digging. What followed was an increasingly viral series of TikToks chronicling the efforts of Kala, who some on the internet dubbed "Tunnel Girl," as she excavated and constructed a tunnel system under her sub
Beautiful, Terrible Internet
Warning: This episode contains multitudes! Hosts Ben and Amory explore how viral clips of DOGE staffers' video depositions found a new life online after a judge temporarily ordered them removed. They also dabble in a Reddit thought exercise with a potentially dubious origin
Show notes:
DOGE staffer who flagged grants for 'DEI' struggles to define the term (The Independent)
LPT: I started pre
Sexy spines or literary red flags?
Maybe you can't judge books by their covers. But can you judge people by their books? Reddit's bookshelf detectives say yes. Producer Kalyani Saxena guides hosts Ben and Amory through the stacks and offers a picture of her own bookshelf to the Reddit detectives as tribute.
r/BookshelvesDetective (Reddit)
Started seeing this guy. What does it say about him??
(r/BookshelvesDetective)What do m
Digging Up Lily's Garden
A woman sitting blissfully on a vibrating laundromat dryer. A faked pregnancy test to dump a bad boyfriend. In 2019, the internet was abuzz about bizarre ads for a mobile game called Lily's Garden. The ads were only about 15 seconds each, but they evoked a whole universe of drama amongst a cast of zany characters that inspired countless YouTube videos and copious internet chatter.
The thing is...
What it's like to be undressed by Grok without your consent
Note: This episode describes sexual situations that are non-consensual.
Sharing a photo of yourself online has always carried some risk. But things got a lot scarier this year when users began using Grok, X's generative AI chatbot to create sexualized deepfakes of women and children. Iona Fyfe, Scottish folk singer and activist, was one of the people who had an image altered and manipulated by G
Obscure music is good and nice!
Some rare folks are born with the perfect music taste. But most of us have to look elsewhere for a tune that sparks a shoulder shimmy or two. Hosts Ben and Amory spend some time jamming to obscure music from Reddit. They also explore how a TikTok original became Dr. Pepper's catchy new jingle.
And "baby, it's good and nice."
Show notes:
I wasn't sure on this one at first, but you can't beat
Fresh, stale, or politics? The Melania doc's Rotten Tomatoes score, explained
Melania, a documentary about the first lady, has a 10 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, but a 90 percent score from audience members, an unusual discrepancy that raises the question, how did Rotten Tomatoes get those scores anyway?
Show notes:
The 'Melania' movie audience: Older white women
(NPR)
Melania’s Movie Shows Signs of Bulk Buying to Boost Box Office: Guru (The Daily Bea
Rewind: Love In Transition
In this OG throwback from the Endless Thread archives, hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson revisit a classic episode from their first year of production in 2018.
Originally produced during the show's early partnership with Reddit, "Love in Transition" explores the most powerful emotion in the universe in all its forms, shapes, and sizes. This might just be your perfect weekend listen, cel
You're Wrong About the Satanic Panic
In the 1980s, a moral panic swept across America. Parents, prosecutors, and talk show hosts became convinced that devil worshippers were hiding in plain sight, abusing children at daycares, performing ritualistic sacrifices, and corrupting the innocent.
Sarah Marshall of You're Wrong About has a new podcast about this period of Satanic Panic called The Devil You Know. She talks to Ben and Amory a
Hot (and not) fruit takes
What temperature do you like your fruit? What is the correct way to peel a banana? This week on Endless Thread, Ben and Amory cherry pick a couple of the hottest fruit debates taking place on Reddit.
Show notes:
My husband is mildly infuriated that I open a banana from the antenna side! (Reddit)
CMV: The only correct way to peel and eat a banana is from the bottom. (Reddit)
Microwaving frui
The Alpha Male Myth
In 1970, a young biologist named David Mech published what could be the most consequential book on wolves ever written. At the time, The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species, was the most complete collection of scientific knowledge on wolves money could buy, and it became best seller for Dave's publishers. But outside of the world of wolf biology, the book is also credited with
The Anvillain
Fast-and-cheap shipping is now foundational to the American way of life, thanks in large part to Amazon Prime. Still, when producer Grace Tatter sees a video of a man claiming that he's continuously ordering and returning an 110-pound anvil from Amazon with no repercussions from the tech giant, she has questions. Is this legit, or is it a Wile E. Coyote-level scheme? Unlike an anvil, the answer ca
Algospeak
Adam Aleksic's Roman Empire is language, particularly how algorithms are changing the way we all use words. This week, Endless Thread gets algospeak-pilled and learns how "unalive" spread from a kids' Spider-Man cartoon to TikTok mental health communities trying to avoid censorship; what we're really saying when we say we're "goblin-core," and whether this all means we're "cooked."
Show notes:
A
Rewind: Today You, Tomorrow Me: Why A Decade-Old Reddit Comment Still Resonates Today
10 years ago, Justin found himself on the side of the road with a blown out tire. Hours went by and no one stopped to help. But just as he was about to give up, something happened that changed Justin forever.
This episode was originally published on Nov. 13, 2020.
Encore: Never Gonna Give You Up
Who gets credit for starting a meme? Usually... nobody — they're made too quickly and organically. In the case of one of the most famous bait-and-switch memes of all time, the "Rick Roll," we may be looking at something experts call convergent evolution. Did the Rick Roll originate with a piece of code on the message board 4Chan, or with a prank call to a local sports show in Michigan? And why doe
Lost Without You
2025 marks 20 years of Google Maps — a tool that many of us would be, quite literally, lost without.
We hear from New Orleanians who used Google Maps/Google Earth in its inaugural year to survey the damage to their homes following Hurricane Katrina.
We also talk to the internet's Map Men, who ask whether "the best maps humanity has ever produced are simultaneously the worst maps for humanity?" i
Ukraine's expanding drone web
There's a lot of drone warfare footage on the internet from Ukraine and Russia. But over the last year, a surprising change has emerged, via photos from the battlefront posted online. It has become clear that a huge part of the drone war, from dropping grenades on soldiers in bunkers, to dropping explosives on infrastructure or airfields, is wired. Those wires are fiber optic cable, stretching fro
Ruby Tandoh, the World's Best Lasagna,and how the internet is collectively changing what we all want to eat
The internet decides what's for dinner.
Ruby Tandoh is the author of the new book, All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now. A stint on the Great British Bake Off when she was in college launched her into the world of cookbooks — increasingly irrelevant in a world where we're more likely to turn to Google for a recipe than turn to our bookshelves — and provided her an education in how pop cul
Episodes we love: Sandwiches of History
In honor of the day-after-Thanksgiving leftover sandwich, we're revisiting our conversation with Barry Enderwick, the man behind the beloved and wildly popular "Sandwiches of History" social media accounts.
Barry joined Ben and Amory to make a triple-decker sandwich from 1958, and to talk about his first cookbook, "Sandwiches of History the Cookbook: All the Best (and Most Surprising) Things Peop
Chiveman and a mountain of margarine
Endless Thread serves up two of Reddit's most absurd food sagas. First course: Chivegate, in which a Redditor vows to chop a cup of chives daily until the kitchen confidential subreddit declares perfection, only to be accused of fraud. Second course: A Reddit user desperately seeking advice on how to quietly move 13 two-thousand-pound pallets of margarine.
Show Notes:
u/occasionallyvertical's
Fryders and Alligator Alcatraz tours: When trolls get inventive
Ben and Amory share two stories about some out-of-the-box internet trolling. First, Amory tries to untangle a web of rumors surrounding an unusual dish from New Zealand. Then, Ben takes us aboard Terri's Tourz, an alleged Everglade tourist attraction claiming to offer the nation's first ever tours of the South Florida Detention Center known as Alligator Alcatraz.
Show notes:
3 Facts About New Z
Episodes we love: Lofi Girl
This November, we're playing some of our favorite episodes from the past alongside new stuff, so that newer listeners can experience our back catalogue. And LoFi Girl is one that holds up, big time!
If you've ever searched for "chill beats for studying" or some other form of lean back, endless playlists without vocals and with a consistent vibe, you've probably come across "Lofi Girl."
A livestr
So Cute!
While some people find Labubus terrifying, millions of others find their big eyes and furry features irresistibly adorable. Why? From Labubu dolls taking over TikTok, to emoji taking over our text messages, cuteness is all over the internet. Ben and Amory talk to Joshua Paul Dale, professor at Tokyo's Chuo University and the preeminent cuteness expert about how cute has conquered all.
A previous
Episodes we love: Welcome to the Jam
Everybody get up, it's time to slam now... again! Yes, we're revisiting our episode about the website for the 1996 movie "Space Jam," which is still up and functioning nearly 30 years later.
Amory and Ben talk to the hilarious team behind this digital artifact and hear the unlikely story of its continued existence.
Show notes:
The Space Jam website
'Space Jam' Forever: The Website That Would
Endless Dread: Haunted Hayride
In keeping with Endless Thread tradition, Ben and Amory are celebrating spooky season with another installment of "Endless Dread." This time, we're bringing you along on both an actual haunted hayride — thanks to McCray's Farm in South Hadley, MA — and a digital one, through a handful of spooky stories from the internet.
Ben introduces Amory to a TikTok commentary on recent ICE raids disguised as
Episodes we love: Artist Known
New to Endless Thread? Wooooo! We're revisiting some favorites from our archives to welcome you.
First up: The cover art for the 1976 paperback edition of Madeleine L'Engle's classic, spooky sci-fi/fantasy novel "A Wrinkle in Time" — featuring a rainbow-winged centaur and a green, glowering, red-eyed face — is iconic. And yet, for nearly 50 years, no one has known who illustrated it. Well, not NO
Hidden Levels Ep. 6: Segagaga
The final episode of Hidden Levels explores the story of SEGA developer Tez Okano and the bizarre, meta-game he created: Segagaga.
Okano joined SEGA in 1992, witnessing firsthand the company's tumultuous experience in the "console wars" against Nintendo and Sony.
In the mid-1990s, SEGA struggled to make hardware that kept up with its rivals. The SEGA CD, the 32X, and the Saturn were all commerci
Hidden Levels Ep. 5: Press B to Touch Grass
Video games are arguably the antithesis of nature; highly constructed worlds, synthetic, inorganic. If you grew up gaming, you may recall grown-ups telling you to shut down the console, go outside, and touch some grass.
These days, though, touching grass isn’t something you have to do outside. As gaming has grown into a 200 billion dollar industry, the boundary between screen and soil has muddied
Hidden Levels: Surgical Precision (Side Quest)
Dr. James "Butch" Rosser was a pioneer in minimally invasive surgery in the 1990s. When he credited his surgical skills to video games, people dismissed him. The prevailing narrative was that kids who played video games became killers, not doctors. So Butch set out on quest: to show how video games can help make better doctors.
Show notes:
The impact of video games on training surgeons in the
Hidden Levels Ep. 4: Machinima
Machinima — a portmanteau of “machine” and “cinema” — refers to movies filmed inside video games. The art form had a renaissance in the 1990s, and many thought it had a future in Hollywood. Among the early pioneers were the New York animation collective the Ill Clan, who puppeteered characters in real-time inside the video game Quake, bypassing traditional animation rendering. This technique explo
Hidden Levels: Choose Your Player (Side Quest)
Today, Stef Sanjati is a creator on YouTube with over half a million subscribers. Her content mostly focuses on her two greatest loves — makeup and gaming — often combining the two with her otherworldly video game-inspired beauty tutorials.
Growing up in small-town Ontario, though, Stef was a quiet, introverted kid who was bullied a lot. For one thing, she looked different from her peers. Having
Hidden Levels Ep. 3: This Game Wants YOU
For decades, the U.S. Army has been on edge about recruitment, hitting its goals for a few years, only to miss them again. As part of their strategy to combat recruiting concerns, the Army has turned its focus online: to the world of gaming and competitive eSports.
With nearly 80% of Americans between the ages of 13 and 28 playing video games weekly, the Army has identified this community as a vi
Hidden Levels Ep. 2: Stick It to 'Em
In this second episode of Hidden Levels, Amory traces the history of the humble-yet-genius joystick — from early 20th century aviation, to 1970s video game consoles like the Atari 2600, to the Nintendo 64 thumbstick in the 1990s, to what some consider the joystick's greatest implementation: the dual-thumbstick controller.
This optimal interface has changed the game, and not just the video game. T
Hidden Levels Ep. 1: Mr. Boomshakalaka
Welcome to our all-new collaborative series, "Hidden Levels," in which we team up with 99% Invisible to explore how the world of video games has impacted the world beyond. We’ll dive deep into how games are made and designed, exploring everything from the history of the joystick to the faithful recreation of nature in digital spaces.
Whether you are a lifelong gamer or have never picked up a cont
Announcing 'Hidden Levels': how the videogame world has changed the world beyond videogames
Have you ever jumped on something as you're moving through the real world, and heard that Mario bouncy sound in your head? Or maybe seen someone acting like an NPC when they're a real person? Maybe you know that the first real "in-app" purchase was actually a weapons store in an arcade game version of Double Dragon 3.
Wherever you go in the real world, you can find signs of the influence of video
A fork (still) in the road
You've heard of the "Freshman 15"... how about the "DOGE 15"? This is how some federal employees have referred to the stress associated with the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency back in January and the "restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force" that came with it, as announced in an email sent to nearly all federal employees with the subject line, "Fork in the R
Bridezillas and Quiz Traps
Ben and Amory share stories about potential pettiness from Reddit. Ben shares a post from r/weddinshaming post about a bride who changed her wedding to a weekday in another state. Amory counters with a teacher who used AI to foil his student's cheating. Petty or just? You be the judge.
Credits: This episode was produced by Frannie Monahan. It was co-hosted by Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnso
Losing Our Marbles
In 2020, Jenna Marbles — one of the most popular YouTube creators of all time —posted her last video. Five years later, her devoted fanbase still wonders: where is she, and is she okay? We investigate the mystery behind one of YouTube's biggest disappearances, and why people still care so much.
Show notes:
r/JennaMarbles (Reddit)
The Best, Fakest, and Most Teary Influencer Apologies of 2020
Message In A Laptop
What is your relationship with the trash heap of digital history? Can you still connect your old hard drives? Still sifting through your old photos in the cloud? Do you ever low key snoop in the old electronics of other people, searching for treasure?
That's what Noah Simmons was doing a while back when he discovered something compelling in its simplicity: a homework assignment document, on an ol
Encore: The Internet's Most Hated Bird
As summer fades away, we bring you an encore episode about you shoreline companions and occasional bullies — gulls.
Gulls are not beloved creatures. Consult social media, where they are deemed relentless, dirty pests who steal our food and crowd our beaches. As one TikTok user puts it, "Seagulls are the worst animals to ever exist."
Such hatred overlooks truths about this intelligent, charismati
Introducing "Jaws Island"
Dun dun... This week, on Endless Thread... dun dun... something new is here... dun dun dun dun... a podcast mini-series about the 50th anniversary of the cinematic classic... DUN dun dun dun DUN dun dun dun..."Jaws!"
Part 1 of this mini-series, Jaws Island, is right here, right now, and it's all about the "finatics" (yes, that's what they call themselves). WBUR arts and culture correspondent Andr
AI and Relationships, Part 2: AI Therapists and Bot Boyfriends
What happens when we outsource aspects of our most personal moments to machines?
In the second installment of our two-part series on AI and relationships, we hear from Rhiannon Williams, a reporter for MIT Technology Review who spoke to people all over the world about how they're using AI to relate to their loved ones, including a man who turns to it during marital disputes, a French mother who u
AI and Relationships, Part 1: Into the Woods
Amir Mizroch spent years deconstructing fairy tales for his children — and thinking that maybe, he could create something out of his analysis and storytelling for a wider audience. In the first episode of our two-part series on AI and relationships, we hear what Amir finally created, and explore the questions it raises about connection in the digital age.
Credits: This episode was produced by Gra
Bootcamp for Men: from betas to alphas
In the past few years, videos from a new kind of camp have begun circulating the internet. They feature men participating in a variety of bizarre activities: from aggressively digging holes under floodlights, to collectively wailing in a pool of water. These are man camps, where men can pay up to $18,000 to undergo extreme boot-camp-like conditioning in the name of reclaiming their masculinity.
Th
Kisscams, ratcams, Barbra Streisand
On this week's Endless Thread, host Ben Brock Johnson and producer Grace Tatter bring us two stories about the power of livestreams – one from the Coldplay concert box seats, and another from a notorious rat corridor in Brooklyn, NYC.
Show notes:
What's the deal with "Astronomer" CEO and CPO affair? (Reddit)
A Crown Heights Building's Rat Infestation Gets a Livestream (Hell Gate)
Rat cam (
Thinking Outside the Dox: What 'consensual doxing' can teach us about internet privacy
Kristen Sotakoun (@notkahnjunior on TikTok) says she has always been 'the FBI of the friend group' – that person you can count on to dig up the juicy details on anyone's social media.
It's a skillset that has earned her millions upon millions of views on TikTok in a series she has dubbed 'consensual doxing.' In her videos, Kristen completes challenges from her viewers to find their birthdays, us
There's a new emoji for sadness :(
What does the thumbs-up emoji mean to you? Or the wilted rose? The meanings of emojis are limitless and can differ across social groups or generations. On this episode of Endless Thread, Ben and Amory discuss two stories about how certain emojis have taken on surprising meanings.
Show notes:
* Here’s why the Aerial Tramway Emoji is suddenly in every YouTube comment section (daily dot)
*Alright gu
Why it feels like it rains every weekend
If you feel like it's been raining a lot on the weekends this summer, you're not alone. A couple months ago, we noticed a thread on r/boston asking why? So, we enlisted the help of one of our WBUR colleagues, Climate and Environment Corespondent Barbara Moran to clear things up once and for all.
Show notes:
Rain Every Weekend??? (Reddit)
OMG, why is it raining every Saturday in Boston? (WBUR)
Episodes We Love: How to Fight a Shark
This episode originally aired on July 12, 2024. It has been updated to more clearly represent communication with Kayleigh Grant about a conversation with Kristian Parton.
When Endless Thread producer Grace Tatter heard a friend assert that she could ward off a shark because of TikTok, Grace was both concerned for her friend's safety, and curious. Why are there so many videos about "redirecting" s
Raiding the fridge with Condiment Claire
This week on Endless Thread, we're raiding our refrigerators and rating our favorite condiments with TikTok creator and author "Condiment Claire" Dinhut. We learn about the surprising history of some of our favorite flavor-enhancers, and Claire shares her secrets for using up the last bits of sauce in a jar and how she keeps her online presence appetizing.
Show notes:
The Condiment Book (Flatiro
War and Pizza
In the hours leading up to Israel commencing its June missile strikes on Iran, X users were posting about pizza. Specifically, how pizza places around the United States Pentagon were experiencing an unusual spike in business.
The Pentagon Pizza Index refers to a theory that dates back to the Cold War, suggesting that increased pizza orders around the Pentagon could be a harbinger of imminent mil
Pics or this episode didn't happen
A picture's worth a thousand words, or in this case, a podcast episode.
This week Ben and Amory bring two very different stories from Reddit about pictures on the internet. First – what legal rights do we have over our photos after posting them on Instagram? Then, Ben indoctrinates Amory to The Game.
Show notes:
Unauthorized use of my photo being displayed in every corporate store in US. Wher
When the government wants your socials
Jeffrey Ngo is from Hong Kong. He used to talk about politics all of the time with his friends in group chats and on social media, from casually sending memes, to planning protests.
What happens to online speech when you're unsure how much the government is monitoring your speech, and what the repercussions will be if they don't like it?
Show notes:
PROFILE: For Jeffrey Ngo, The Fight For Hon
Derek 'The Menswear Guy' Guy
Men's fashion might seem like a niche topic. But people of all genders and sartorial sensibilities follow Derek Guy on X for his clothing takes... even if they're not quite sure how they found his page.
Endless Thread talks to Derek about how he weaves together humor, history, cultural criticism, and political commentary to make fashion feel relevant to people who have never seriously considered
Get inked! Or... not!
'Tis the season to show some skin! Perhaps some tattoo-adorned skin?
In this week's episode, Ben tells Amory about the r/tattoos community's reaction to a man whose friends made him self-conscious about his flowery tattoo. Amory tells Ben about the science behind why tattoos stay put on our bodies, which has only recently come to be understood.
Group Chats: The Dark Matter of American Politics
The thing about social media when it was created was that it was public. Ideas shared were debated for all to see. Today much of that is happening behind closed doors—in group chats.
Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of the media outlet Semafor and co-host of the podcast Mixed Signals, speaks with Endless Thread about the elite group chats on Signal and WhatsApp that are shaping American politics.
****
The bots are taking over
The bots are here to stay, and they're everywhere. The trouble is, learning how to spot them.
On this week's episode of Endless Thread, Ben and Amory discuss two stories from Reddit about undercover bots. First — is there such a thing as an easy tell for identifying bots? Second, what happens when internet users accept bots as fellow humans, only to discover the truth later?
Show Notes:
‘The Wo
Encore: The internet's fight over dinosaur emoji
A few years ago, we brought you the story of how dinosaur emoji had entered the debate about trans rights.
We were reminded of this episode recently when a White House memorandum lambasted NPR for spreading "radical, woke propaganda" and linked to our story as an example. After the memo, President Trump signed an executive order to stop federal funding to NPR and PBS.
We stand by our reporting.
Boy do we have a rant for you
It's rant season. Or is it? When is it *not* rant season? In this week's episode of Endless Thread, Ben and Amory discuss two very different, very viral, rants from Reddit. One is about how the current design trends in our public and private spaces are hard on the ears. Another discusses how escape room adventures can bring out the worst in people. Perhaps there's some humor and some lessons to gl
Find Our Friends
At any given time, 110 people can tell you exactly where James Tatter is.
Every single iPhone user has the Find My app on their phone, which allows them to share their location with friends and family. Increasingly, for young people like James, it's becoming also a form of social media.
Endless Thread producer (and James's sister) Grace Tatter wanted to know how something that seems creepy to so
Introducing NHPR's "The Final Days of Sgt. Tibbs"
Endless Thread is thrilled to introduce you to a new podcast from our friends at NHPR’s Document team. That’s the team behind other great narrative shows like Bear Brook and The 13th Step.
For the past six months, NHPR reporter Todd Bookman has been spending a lot of time thinking about… a cat. This cat’s name is Sergeant Tibbs – he’s 19.
Tibbs goes missing… and lands in the center of a lot of h
Nothing Violent
There's a conspiracy theory on Reddit right now suggesting that Reddit is using aggressive tools to hide posts praising or supporting Luigi Mangione's alleged execution-style killing of the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson. Endless Thread looks at what is going on with Luigi memes on this platform: the Nintendo character memes… and the other ones.
Show notes:
A Reddit moderation tool is
Introducing Levittown, new podcast from Kaleidescope and Bloomberg
Have you ever been deepfaked? Or maybe this is just a new fear – that photos of you end up online that are you – but not really you? What would you do? For an increasing number of people – especially women – this is becoming a reality.
So much so that a recent bill in Congress called the “Take It Down” Act has found some incredibly rare bipartisan support. The bill is sponsored by republican Sena
Toyota Hilux trucks - why are they popular online and in war zones?
In April of 2024, a group of aid workers were killed by Israeli Defense Forces while bringing food to Central Gaza. The IDF had alleged that its military analysts had identified a gunman on top of one of the trucks carrying supplies, suggesting it was a military vehicle, not an aid vehicle.
In the online debate following the event, a familiar trope popped up: arguing over whether one of the aid t
How to responsibly leak information to the press
Well, the messaging app Signal has been in the news recently, thanks to a snafu in which prominent federal defense officials mistakenly added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a group chat in which they discussed military strikes in Yemen.
This whole situation reminds us of another conversation we've been having as a team about how to responsibly leak information to the press,
Adrián and the Whale
There are moments that define each of our lives. Some we can predict: graduations, marriages, births, death. Others? Not so much.
And in the year 2025, sometimes, if the stars align just so, you may find that moment explode online.
That's what happened to 23-year-old Adrián Simancas. Last month, he was paddling the Straight of Magellan, with his father Dell, when the unimaginable happened: a hu
Bonus: A conversation with Hasan Piker
Last week, we introduced you to the wildly popular, albeit controversial, streamer and self-declared socialist Hasan Piker — what he’s all about, how he’s delivering his message to millions of followers, and who he’s reaching and resonating with.
When we talked to him in November, Hasan had a lot to say about the Democratic Party, about the streaming platform Twitch, and about what’s further divi
The Stream is Up
Every day, seven days a week, for eight hours or more, Hasan Piker is live on the video game streaming platform Twitch. This is where he shares his political commentary with a dedicated community of viewers — many of whom fall into a particularly sought-after electoral demographic: young men.
One of the dominant theories about the re-election of President Donald Trump in November 2024 was that it
Terminally Online
"Should I be joking at a time like this?"
That's the question then 33-year-old Brooke Eby asked herself when she uploaded her first piece of TikTok comedy in 2022, about being diagnosed with a terminal illness. Brooke's since built an audience of hundreds of thousands of people who are rooting for, and laughing with, her. Sometimes it gets weird. Brooke talks to Ben and Amory about how facing dea
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