Endless Thread
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Endless Thread
Untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL. Hosted by Ben Brock Johnson & Amory Sivertson.
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451 episódios
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 pr...
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 convers...
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 choo...
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...
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 astronom...
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...
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 lat...
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 ...
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 aft...
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 g...
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 biza...
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 th...
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 Be...
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...
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...
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 pla...
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 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 Eco...
The Anvillain: Has this man really been buying and returning an anvil on Amazon for almost a year?
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...
How algorithms are changing the way we talk: The rise of '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-p...
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 t...
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-swit...
Lost without you: 20 years of finding (losing?) our way with Google Maps
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...
The drone web: how consumer drones have covered Ukraine's battle lines with fiber optic cable
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 fr...
What's on the menu: Ruby Tandoh on how the internet and algorithms shape our appetites
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...
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 wildl...
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...
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 dis...
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 catalogu...
Labubus, lafufus, and Hello Kitty: How cuteness conquered the internet
While some people find Labubus terrifying, millions of others find their big eyes and furry features irresistibly adorable. Why? From Labubu dolls tak...
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 u...
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 br...
Episodes we love: Artist Known — Illustrator for 'A Wrinkle in Time' gets long-overdue credit
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...
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...
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 te...
Surgical Precision: One doctor's quest to show how video games can save lives
Dr. James "Butch" Rosser was a pioneer in minimally invasive surgery in the 1990s. When he credited his surgical skills to video games, people dismiss...
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 man...
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 ga...
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 t...
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...