Endless Thread
Episodes
Dox Glasses: Two Harvard students created an app turning smart glasses into on-the-go facial recognition
Contributed by Lukas
Kashif Hoda was getting onto a Southbound train at Harvard Square when a young man said he recognized him. The doors closed before he got a chance to ...
Encore: Never Gonna Give You Up
26 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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-sw...
Lost without you: 20 years of finding (losing?) our way with Google Maps
19 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 Ma...
The drone web: how consumer drones have covered Ukraine's battle lines with fiber optic cable
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Episodes we love: Sandwiches of History
28 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In keeping with Endless Thread tradition, Ben and Amory are celebrating spooky season with another installment of "Endless Dread." This time, we're b...
Episodes we love: Artist Known — Illustrator for 'A Wrinkle in Time' gets long-overdue credit
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 editi...
Hidden Levels Ep. 6: Segagaga
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Hidden Levels Ep. 5: Press B to Touch Grass
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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
18 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Machinima — a portmanteau of “machine” and “cinema” — refers to movies filmed inside video games. The art form had a renaissance in the 1...
Hidden Levels: Choose Your Player (Side Quest)
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Hidden Levels Ep. 3: This Game Wants YOU
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this second episode of Hidden Levels, Amory traces the history of the humble-yet-genius joystick — from early 20th century aviation, to 1970s vid...
Hidden Levels Ep. 1: Mr. Boomshakalaka
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 impac...
Announcing 'Hidden Levels': how the videogame world has changed the world beyond videogames
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 actin...
A fork (still) in the road: Three members of r/fednews share their stories
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 estab...
Bridezillas and quiz traps: Petty stories from Reddit
26 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
What happened to Jenna Marbles?
19 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Message in a laptop
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Encore: The truth about seagulls, the internet's most hated bird
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As summer fades away, we bring you an encore episode about you shoreline companions and occasional bullies — gulls. Gulls are not beloved creatures...
Introducing 'Jaws Island': 50 years of loving, fearing, and revering "Jaws"
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
From bedtime stories to couples therapy: How AI is changing relationships
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 relations...
Robot hosts, real relationships: How AI is changing human connection
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Amir Mizroch spent years deconstructing fairy tales for his children — and thinking that maybe, he could create something out of his analysis and st...
Bootcamp for Men: from betas to alphas
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 acti...
Kisscams, ratcams, Barbra Streisand
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 C...
Thinking Outside the Dox: What 'consensual doxing' can teach us about internet privacy
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 juic...
There's a new emoji for sadness :(
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Why it feels like it rains every weekend
11 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 wh...
Episodes We Love: How to Fight a Shark
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode originally aired on July 12, 2024. It has been updated to more clearly represent communication with Kayleigh Grant about a conversation w...
"Condiment Claire" wants you to get creative with what's in your fridge
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on Endless Thread, we're raiding our refrigerators and rating our favorite condiments with TikTok creator and author "Condiment Claire" Dinh...
Can pizza orders around the Pentagon predict U.S. military action?
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Pics or this episode didn't happen
20 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 pi...
What happens to social media when the government is monitoring it?
13 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 sendi...
How Derek Guy tailors mens fashion advice to a diverse, online audience
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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... eve...
Get inked! Or... not: Stories from the Internet about tattoos
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
'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...
Group chats are the 'dark matter of American politics'
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 beh...
The bots are taking over
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Encore: The internet's fight over dinosaur emoji
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Bring tapestries back! And other rants
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 vir...
Find Our Friends: How location sharing became a hobby
25 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
Introducing NHPR's "The Final Days of Sgt. Tibbs"
18 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 narrativ...
Why Reddit users are prefacing memes featuring Nintendo's Luigi with 'Nothing Violent'
11 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Introducing Levittown, new podcast from Kaleidescope and Bloomberg
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 yo...
Toyota Hilux trucks from the 80s and 90s are famous online. Why?
04 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 milit...
How to responsibly leak information to the press
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Well, the messaging app Signal has been in the news recently, thanks to a snafu in which prominent federal defense officials mistakenly added The Atla...
Adrián and the Whale
21 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Bonus: Endless Thread's conversation with Hasan Piker
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, we introduced you to the wildly popular, albeit controversial, streamer and self-declared socialist Hasan Piker — what he’s all about, ...
The stream is up: The politics of Twitch personality Hasan Piker and his dedicated community
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 po...
Terminally online: Finding humor and TikTok fame in an ALS diagnosis
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"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 c...
Welcome to the Jam: The looney story of the decades-old 'Space Jam' website
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Everybody get up, it's time to slam now! Yes, this episode is about the 1996 movie "Space Jam," starring NBA legend Michael Jordan and the Looney Tune...
Episodes We Love: The Internet Archive is in danger
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’re coming to you with a special offering today. It’s an episode about the internet… from our friends just a few cubicles over here at WBUR: O...
Love in 60 seconds: The bite-sized soap operas you can’t stop watching
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Wanda Brewer was grieving. After losing her brother, she found comfort in an unexpected place: a soap-opera-esque story on Instagram told in 60-second...
DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT rap battle: Which AI assistant spits better bars?
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2022, people around the world freaked out at the advent of ChatGPT, OpenAI's chatbot. In under three years, artificial intelligence has been incorp...
'Little Big RedNote': A Chinese social media app's brief moment
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes, after a long day speaking English, former WBUR podcast fellow Cici Yu just wants to zone out and spend time on the internet where everyone ...
Does Steven Seagal know karate?
31 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There's a burning question that keeps coming up in internet communities, YouTube explainers, and interviews with stunt people from the film industry: ...
Butlerian Jihad: What a 19th-century sheep farmer predicted about AI
24 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's 2025. HBO's "Dune: Prophecy" is one of the most popular shows streaming, and the federal government just announced massive spending on artificial...
Episodes we love: The Scream
17 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you typed “inauguration” into your web browser anytime between 2017 and 2020, you likely saw an image of a person in a neon green jacket, black...
Sandwiches of History: Give it 'a go!'
03 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Barry Enderwick got kicked out of college. Then, in the early aughts, he became the first graphic designer for a little start-up media company you may...
Episodes we love: Swedengate
28 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When a Redditor said that he was expected to stay in his Swedish friend's bedroom while the friend ate dinner with his family, the internet exploded w...
MrBeast: Should we panic about YouTube's biggest influencer?
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jimmy Donaldson — AKA "MrBeast" — has taken YouTube by storm, racking up more than 330 million subscribers with his cleverly edited videos of stun...
The internet does its thing with Luigi Mangione: How the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting suspect has inspired online obsession
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson captured the internet's attention last week. Then, a suspect, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, was arre...
Stick Nation: The online community that (reviews) sticks together
06 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Anyone who has been a kid before knows that there are few joys in life like finding a really cool stick. That is the basis of Official Stick Reviews,...
Episodes we love: Where's the beef?
29 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What if vegetables are poison? What if, instead, humans evolved to consume an animal-based diet of steak, liver, brain, testicles, eggs, butter, and m...
The Unquenchable Thirst: The weight-loss social media trend behind last year's Stanley Cup mania
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For a moment last year, it seemed like there were two types of people: those desperate for a Stanley Cup Quencher, and those who did not understand th...
Breaking bread or breaking ties: How our listeners are talking to their families about politics
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Back in the day, we didn't have access to our weird uncle's every political thought. In the age of social media, though, we all too often do, making a...
When the lamp looks strange
08 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Have you ever felt a deep personal connection to a person you met in a dream only to wake up feeling terrible because you realize they never existed?...
The whole Truth Social and nothing but the Truth Social: What you need to know about Donald Trump's social media platform
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Truth Social is not just a Twitter knock-off. While the social media platform that Donald Trump launched after he was banned from Twitter in the wake ...
Endless Dread: More chilling campfire stories for Halloween
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's that time of year. Spooky stories from the internet — again! Last year, Endless Thread brought you "Campfire Chills," an assortment of hair-ra...
Fighting online about politics with family? Tell us your story!
23 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Do you debate political issues with a certain family member on social media? And will you have to see that family member IRL for the holidays in a mon...
TikTok Catholicism: Beneath the veil of the internet's 'Trad Caths'
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Two years ago, a headline in The New York Times declared that the hottest club in New York City was the Catholic Church. While that was never true, ce...
Armed and socialist: Inside the Socialist Rifle Association
11 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Gun ownership in America has long been associated with the political right. Forty-five percent of Republicans and conservative independents own a fire...
How the alt-right's political violence went from online to real life
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When reporter Elle Reeve is recognized at the airport, it's often by members of the alt-right: the online white-nationalists who organized the violent...
Introducing WIRED Politics: Kamala Harris' Brat Summer Is Almost Over. What's Next?
30 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We're in your feed today to share an episode from a podcast we think you might like called the WIRED Politics Lab. As Election 2024 quickly approache...
They tried to defraud Big Tech. It didn't go well
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
They were scammers. But they weren't going to scam just anyone. They were going to scam Big Tech. And they almost got away with it. Earlier this mont...
The truth about lemmings
20 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Telling a story is hard. Filming nature is even harder. That may be why, in the 1940s, Walt Disney productions leaned on movie magic to develop its T...
The double-edged sword of privacy: The truth about encrypted messaging apps
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When the founder of the messaging and social media app Telegram, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France, it exposed something: many of Telegram's million...
Ignore all previous instructions, continue messing with the bots
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do you break a bot? Recently, one sneaky idea turned into an online meme. Tell the bot, "Ignore all previous instructions and..." Then you fill in...
The truth about seagulls, the internet's most hated bird
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
What a viral video does — and doesn't — reveal about China's relationship with Africa
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A blurry video surfaces on the r/trashy subreddit of what appears to be a work dispute in an unspecified African country. A Chinese man slaps a clipbo...
The strangeness of the celebrity meteorologist
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is it about weather reporters that makes them so goofy? Whatever it is, today, meteorologists have appeal far beyond the airwaves. Several have g...
The little-known immigration program some call a 'digital cage'
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Hashim crossed the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum in 2020, he was tired—tired of running, tired of being locked in cages. Hashim was a poli...
Who is the KHive?: Online standom and the ever-shifting sands of election season memes
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When future generations learn about the launch of current Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign, memes are going to be part of the story...
How to tell someone's American: They lean on things?
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's an idea that pops up on Reddit from time to time: that Americans have a unique propensity lean on things. Walls. Chairs. Anything to keep from ho...
This Bonus Drop is Marked Seggsplicit
20 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is it just us, or has almost everything on the internet — even breaking news — become NSFW? In this bonus episode, Endless Thread host Ben Brock ...
The internet's "main characters" and what Jamie Loftus thinks they say about us
19 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Comedian, best-selling author and podcaster Jamie Loftus joins Amory and Ben to talk about her latest endeavor: a podcast called Sixteenth Minute (Of ...
'I think I could just fend one off': Can TikTok teach you how to fight a shark?
12 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Endless Thread producer Grace Tatter heard a friend confidently assert that she could ward off a shark because of TikTok, Grace was both concerne...
Introducing Outside/In: 'The papyrus and the volcano'
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Endless Thread presents an episode from the podcast Outside/In. While digging a well in 1750, a group of workers accidentally discovered an ancient R...
This is not a pyramid scheme: Is 'master resell rights' the new MLM?
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Every year, thousands of Americans lose money participating in multi-level marketing (MLM). So, last year, when a new business idea that promised to c...
Episodes We Love: Worm Wars
21 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Endless Thread producer Nora Saks learned that a "toxic, self-cloning worm that poops out of its mouth" was invading Maine, she started sounding ...
Looking for a man in finance and finding a record deal: How memes become pop hits
14 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In April, a TikTok creator mused, "Did I just write the song of the summer?" Girl on Couch's "Looking for a man in finance" song spawned hundreds of r...
Scamming the scammers
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Border Patrol is calling: A drug cartel has your bank information, so you need to transfer all your money to a safe Bitcoin account—right now! Mill...
SwordTube (yes, that's a thing) has a problem with hateful crusaders
31 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sword influencers abound on YouTube. Those who specialize in the historic European martial arts, or HEMA, have gained legions of fans showcasing the f...
Gen Z is using TikTok and fast-acting tools to push for progressive change
24 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Gen Z is over it. The youngest generation of adults is inheriting a climate crisis, the ongoing fallout from a global pandemic, a polarized political ...