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.
Episodes
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 the United States Pentagon were experiencing an unusual spike in business.
The Pentagon Pizza Index refers to a theory that dates back to the Cold War, suggesting that increased pizza orders around the Pentagon could be a harbinger of immine...
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 pictures on the internet. First – what legal rights do we have over our photos after posting them on Instagram? Then, Ben indoctrinates Amory to The Game.
Show notes:
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 sending memes, to planning protests.
What happens to online speech when you're unsure how much the government is monitoring your speech, and what the repercussions will be if they don't like it?
Show notes:
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... even if they're not quite sure how they found his page.
Endless Thread talks to Derek about how he weaves together humor, history, cultural criticism, and political commentary to make fashion feel relevant to people who have never seriously considered it before.
Show notes
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'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 to a man whose friends made him self-conscious about his flowery tattoo. Amory tells Ben about the science behind why tattoos stay put on our bodies, which has only recently come to be understood.
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 behind closed doors—in group chats.
Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of the media outlet Semafor and co-host of the podcast Mixed Signals, speaks with Endless Thread about the elite group chats on Signal and WhatsApp that are shaping American politics.
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Credits: This episode was ...
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 discuss two stories from Reddit about undercover bots. First — is there such a thing as an easy tell for identifying bots? Second, what happens when internet users accept bots as fellow humans, only to discover the truth later?
Show Notes:
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 when a White House memorandum lambasted NPR for spreading "radical, woke propaganda" and linked to our story as an example. After the memo, President Trump signed an executive order to stop federal funding to NPR and PBS.
We stand by our reporting. And so we decided to bring 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 viral, rants from Reddit. One is about how the current design trends in our public and private spaces are hard on the ears. Another discusses how escape room adventures can bring out the worst in people. Perhaps there's some humor and some lessons to glean from rants, too?
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 them to share their location with friends and family. Increasingly, for young people like James, it's becoming also a form of social media.
Endless Thread producer (and James's sister) Grace Tatter wanted to know how something that seems creepy to some people became so commonplace...
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 shows like Bear Brook and The 13th Step.
For the past six months, NHPR reporter Todd Bookman has been spending a lot of time thinking about… a cat. This cat’s name is Sergeant Tibbs – he’s 19.
Tibbs goes missing… and lands in the center of a lot of human pain, confusion… and inter...
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 alleged execution-style killing of the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson. Endless Thread looks at what is going on with Luigi memes on this platform: the Nintendo character memes… and the other ones.
Show notes:
A Reddit moderation tool is flagging ‘Luigi’ as potentially...
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? For an increasing number of people – especially women – this is becoming a reality.
So much so that a recent bill in Congress called the “Take It Down” Act has found some incredibly rare bipartisan support. The bill is sponsored by republican Senator Ted Cruz and democrat Senator...
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 military analysts had identified a gunman on top of one of the trucks carrying supplies, suggesting it was a military vehicle, not an aid vehicle.
In the online debate following the event, a familiar trope popped up: arguing over whether one of the aid trucks a Toyota Hilux. The reason?...
Well, the messaging app Signal has been in the news recently, thanks to a snafu in which prominent federal defense officials mistakenly added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a group chat in which they discussed military strikes in Yemen.
This whole situation reminds us of another conversation we've been having as a team about how to responsibly leak information to the press, and if there is such a thing as a...
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 2025, sometimes, if the stars align just so, you may find that moment explode online.
That's what happened to 23-year-old Adrián Simancas. Last month, he was paddling the Straight of Magellan, with his father Dell, when the unimaginable happened: a humpback whale emerged from the w...
Last week, we introduced you to the wildly popular, albeit controversial, streamer and self-declared socialist Hasan Piker — what he’s all about, how he’s delivering his message to millions of followers, and who he’s reaching and resonating with.
When we talked to him in November, Hasan had a lot to say about the Democratic Party, about the streaming platform Twitch, and about what’s further dividing Americans right now. So here...
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 political commentary with a dedicated community of viewers — many of whom fall into a particularly sought-after electoral demographic: young men.
One of the dominant theories about the re-election of President Donald Trump in November 2024 was that it was aided by commentators like P...
"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 comedy in 2022, about being diagnosed with a terminal illness. Brooke's since built an audience of hundreds of thousands of people who are rooting for, and laughing with, her. Sometimes it gets weird. Brooke talks to Ben and Amory about how facing death changed her relationship with ...
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 Tunes. Rather, it's about the website for "Space Jam," which is still up and functioning nearly 30 years later.
Amory and Ben talk to the hilarious team behind this digital artifact and hear the unlikely story of its continued existence.
Show notes:
- The Space Jam web...
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