Endless Thread

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."

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 Janko...

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 #Bl...

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.

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 su...

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.

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 Tri...

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...

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.

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 wa...

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...

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...

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 wha...

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.

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 R...

The people of Turkey, Syria and Lebanon are still recovering from the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people and injured thousands more. Two weeks later, another earthquake shook the region. Ben and producer Quincy Walters talk about ways the disaster is being chronicled on social media — from a Twitter user predicting a catastrophic earthquake just days before the actual ear...

This week, Endless Thread spends time talking with two young Russian YouTubers who've had to contend with Russia's crackdown on wartime dissent. Natasha and Zack initially gained traction on YouTube for their videos about Russian food, culture, and daily life. Their slice-of-life vlogs were a huge hit, getting millions of views with each upload. But when Russia invaded Ukraine one year ago, both Z...

Did you have a friend who claimed they were in a long distance relationship with someone really awesome and super hot...but darn it, you could never meet their girlfriend, boyfriend, or SO, because he/she/they lived in Canada? And did suspect their SO was imaginary? Of course you did. In this episode, we meet one Redditor who really and truly did have a girlfriend who lived in Canada, whom he fell...

What happens when you date a chatbot? The app Replika lets users design artificially intelligent bots to be their romantic partners. But the real love story may be more about users learning to love themselves. 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.

When Endless Thread producer Nora Saks learns that a "toxic, self-cloning worm that poops out of its mouth is invading Maine", she starts sounding the alarm about the impending eco-doom. Until, that is, state experts clue her into the "real threat"; a different creepy crawly wriggling towards The Pine Tree State's gardens and precious forests, and fast.  In an attempt to find out more about this r...

Amory shares a 10-year-old Reddit post with Ben showing a photo of a college student with an epic-looking wooden staff and a caption that baffled the photo's subject. Ben shares a Trivial Pursuit question that launched a mystery fit for a Redditor.

Amory and Ben honor the legacy of internet activist Aaron Swartz with two people familiar with his life and work: documentary filmmaker Brian Knappenberger (The Internet's Own Boy) and Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Swartz died by suicide ten years ago this week, on January 11, 2013, at the age of 26. 

“What are the dimensions of an adult llama?” asked a Redditor called Mrs. Sam Handwich in the "No Stupid Questions" community. "I've been hired to make a tuxedo for a llama and I don't have its measurements," she added. In this favorite from the Endless Thread archives, Ben and Amory get to the bottom of this joyful post from 2020.

The unsent letter. We all have one, half-composed in our heads or fully-formed as an email draft. Whatever form these letters take, they go unsent because they might be better left unsent, or because we wouldn’t know how to send them. In this favorite episode from the archives, we discuss a place online where these letters find an audience.

Team Endless Thread is here with your holiday bonus — a bonus episode, that is! If you heard our most recent episode on 'Goosebumps The Musical,' you know that Amory got to talk to R.L. Stine, author of the wildly popular 'Goosebumps' book series, which turned 30 this year. But what you didn’t hear was… most of their conversation! It actually had very little to do with the musical (which, Stine co...