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.
Episodis Recents
468 episodis
Ear rumblers assemble!
Ben can make a roaring, rumbling sound with his ears that no one else can hear. He never thought much about it — whether only he could do this, or whe...
Encore: Owl pursuits
This episode was originally published on March 10, 2023.
In 2022, freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill got a new...
Emily Kwong takes us to science camp
Grab your telescopes because this week on Endless Thread Ben and NPR Short Wave host Emily Kwong take us down two science-related internet wormholes....
'Turn Bluetooth off, or we're turning around.'
The 190 passengers of a United Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey to Palma de Mallorca, Spain had settled into their seats for their overnight fl...
Fruit of the Loom: Horn of Lies
The brand Fruit of the Loom is almost ubiquitous in the world of underwear and casual wear. You have likely seen its logo, if not on your own body, on...
The internet is a perpetual stew
This week on Endless Thread it's a producer takeover with Grace Tatter and Kalyani Saxena serving up some delicious online stories. First, Kalyani dig...
Teach us how to Dougie
Long before TikTok dances, there was the Dougie.
In 2010, Cali Swag District’s “Teach Me How to Dougie” went worldwide, and for the decade-plus...
The Lost Loophole
Kurt Gödel was a genius mathematician and logician, considered by many scholars to be as influential as Aristotle. He was also buddies with fellow gen...
How to Dim the Sun, from Marketplace's How We Survive
The climate crisis is escalating. We have to decarbonize our economy, but we’re moving too slowly. So, what’s the backup plan? This season of How We S...
Socials for Sale
Most of us know the internet isn't a particularly private place. Yet there's a certain feeling of anonymity that comes with sharing online — our words...
Encore: Adrián and the Whale
This episode was originally published on March 21, 2025.
There are moments that define each of our lives. Some we can predict: graduations, mar...
Comfort maxing on the interwebs
Sit back, relax and get cozy. As a matter of fact, why not put on your baggiest of clothes and burrow down in your snuggiest of blankets? This week o...
Back to the Backrooms!
Once upon a dimly lit hallway, Ben and Amory stumbled onto a beloved brainchild of the internet: Backrooms. It began as a "creepypasta"— a horror stor...
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 onl...
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 expec...
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 mys...
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...
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...