Endless Thread
Kanaal Besonderhede
Endless Thread
Hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson dig into the internet's vast and curious ecosystem of online communities to find untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL.
Onlangse Episodes
421 episodes
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...
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 impac...
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 actin...
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 estab...
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 t...
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 wond...
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...
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 creatu...
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...
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 rela...
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 stor...
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 acti...
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 Col...
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...
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...
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 wh...
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 w...
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" Dinh...
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...
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 abo...
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 sendi...
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... eve...
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 rea...
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 beh...
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...
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 rece...
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 vir...
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 all...
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 sh...
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...
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...