Episodit
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Is it just us, or has almost everything on the internet â even breaking news â become NSFW?
In this bonus episode, Endless Thread host Ben Brock Johnson and producer Grace Tatter parse an eggplant emoji-filled chain text message about a breaking news event, the ubiquity of "Hawk Tuah" girl, and what it means that rated-R speak has gone mainstream.
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Credits: This episode was produced and co-hosted by Grace Tatter and Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.
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Comedian, best-selling author and podcaster Jamie Loftus joins Amory and Ben to talk about her latest endeavor: a podcast called Sixteenth Minute (Of Fame) from iHeartMediaâs Cool Zone Media. Jamie talks to people "who became briefly notorious on the internet about how it affected their mental health, amongst other things," she says.
Loftus explores the timing and context in which these "main characters" of the Internet, as she calls them, went viral and asks what their virality says about us, the people who helped â made? â them go viral in the first place.
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Puuttuva jakso?
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When Endless Thread producer Grace Tatter heard a friend confidently assert that she could ward off a shark because of TikTok, Grace was both concerned for her friend's safety, and curious. Why are there so many videos about "redirecting" sharks on TikTok, and how accurate are they?
Hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson dive into the controversial world of SharkTok, where influencers are trying to show a different side of sharks by getting up close and personal with them.
*****
Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter with Cici Yu. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. It was hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson.
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Endless Thread presents an episode from the podcast Outside/In.
While digging a well in 1750, a group of workers accidentally discovered an ancient Roman villa containing over a thousand papyrus scrolls. This was a stunning discovery: the only library from antiquity ever found in situ. But the scrolls were blackened and fragile, turned almost to ash by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Over the centuries, scholarsâ many attempts to unroll the fragile scrolls have mostly been catastrophic. But now, scientists are trying again, this time with the help of Silicon Valley and some of the most advanced technology weâve got: particle accelerators, CT scanners, and AI.
After two thousand years, will we finally be able to read the scrolls?
*****
Reported, produced, and mixed by Justine Paradis
Outside/In host: Nate Hegyi
Edited by Taylor Quimby
Our team also includes Felix Poon
NHPRâs Director of Podcasts is Rebecca Lavoie
Music in this episode came from Silver Maple, Xavy Rusan, bomull, Young Community, Bio Unit, Konrad OldMoney, Chris Zabriski, and Blue Dot Sessions.
Volcano recordings came from daveincamas on Freesound.org, License Attribution 4.0 and felix.blume on freesound.org, Creative Commons 0.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
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Every year, thousands of Americans lose money participating in multi-level marketing (MLM). So, last year, when a new business idea that promised to correct MLM's sins bubbled up on Instagram and TikTok, a lot of people hopped off the MLM train, and onto this new one, lured by the promise of a low-lift and lucrative side hustle.
This new business idea is called "master resell rights." But what exactly is it? Where did it come from? And does it actually solve any of MLM's problems? Endless Thread investigates.
*****
Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. It was hosted by Ben Brock Johnson, Amory Sivertson, and Grace Tatter.
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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 the alarm about the impending eco-doom.
Until, that is, state experts clued her into the "real threat" : A different creepy crawly wriggling towards The Pine Tree State's gardens and precious forests, and fast. In this rebroadcast from January 2023, Endless Thread tunnels down a wormhole, encountering a long history of xenophobic rhetoric about so-called invasive species, and some hard truths about the field of invasion biology itself.
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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 remixes, and won her a record deal. While it might seem remarkable that a five-second TikTok sound can command the attention of pop music kingmakers, the industry has been capitalizing on internet memes for decades. Endless Thread takes a crash course in internet meme pop music history.
Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter . Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The hosts are Amory Sivertson, Ben Brock Johnson, and Grace Tatter.
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Border Patrol is calling: A drug cartel has your bank information, so you need to transfer all your money to a safe Bitcoin accountâright now!
Millions of people will be familiar with calls like this, in which scammers, often in other countries, use threats or promises to rob you. In 2023, individuals and businesses lost an estimated $485 billion to fraud schemes, according to Nasdaq's Global Financial Crime Report.
Law enforcement will only do so much to recover losses. That is why some online streamers are taking matters into their own hands. And they have become famous for fighting back.
Endless Thread's Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson explore the complicated, criminal world of scambaiters.
*****
Credits: This episode was produced by Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. It was hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson.
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Sword influencers abound on YouTube. Those who specialize in the historic European martial arts, or HEMA, have gained legions of fans showcasing the fantastic, bladed techniques of yore.
But talk of parries and pommels has recently given way to bigotry. Endless Thread's Ben Brock Johnson speaks with co-host Amory Sivertson about one valiant influencer fighting back.
*****
Credits: This episode was produced by Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The hosts are Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson.
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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 landscape, and a tenuous economic reality. And many Gen Z members, a generation more likely to identify as progressive than conservative, are ready for something to give.
Enter: Gen Z for Change â a youth-led non-profit that brands itself as, "the place where the creator economy and progressive politics intersect on social media." The group leverages a hundreds-deep network of social media creators to spread calls to action over TikTok. They've also pulled on the programming expertise within their team to develop a cachĂ© of semi-automatic tools that take the guesswork out of engaging with their political agenda.
Their latest tool, "Ceasefire Now!!" takes these efforts one step further â resulting in, by Gen Z for Change's count, two million emails calling for a ceasefire in Gaza hitting the inboxes of elected representatives in Washington every day.
Show notes: Gen Z for Change website Is Gen Z Switching Political Direction? Not So Fast. (PRRI, 2024) Gen Z for Change's Latest Action Sparked a Shift in How Yelp Handles Anti-Abortion Crisis Pregnancy Centers (Teen Vogue, 2022) Kellogg says it will permanently replace striking employees (NPR, 2021)
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After Taylor Paré was stood up on a date, she turned to TikTok. In a now-viral video, she claimed to have uncovered a new scheme to scam to singles looking for love on the internet. Endless Thread investigates.
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Credits: This episode was written and produced by Grace Tatter. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus. The hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Grace Tatter.
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The Vision Pro is Apple's new $3,500 virtual reality headset.
Since its debut in February, users have found new ways to use this latest iteration of a decades-old technology: scrolling TikTok at work, driving Tesla's Cybertruck, recording their kid's birth.
But can VR truly integrate into our daily lives? Or will it forever remain a niche technology for geeks and gamers?
Endless Thread dives into the history of VR and its potential for the future.
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Credits: This episode was written and produced by Cici Yongshi Yu. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson.
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Imagine sitting in a hospital room for 24 consecutive hours in the most agonizing pain you can possibly imagine. You feel a sense of impending doom. You have a feeling this wonât end well. Then, the pain subsides and you walk away. Jamie Seymour has had that experience eleven different times. Heâs a leading expert on one of the worldâs most frightening creatures and heâs paid the price.
This episode originally aired on Oct 12, 2018.
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Our interactions with nature are increasingly mediated by technology. We scroll through wildlife feeds on TikTok. We use Instagram to plan hikes. Even in the wilderness, we religiously bring our phones to document the experience. And then there are animal cams.
Since the 1990s, people have fawned over livestreams of cute pandas and colorful fish. One could argue that animal cams another example of how weâve jammed a screen between ourselves and the wild. But the story of Jackie the bald eagle presents a different perspective: one in which technology might bring us closer to our fellow creatures.
Producer Dean Russell speaks with Endless Thread co-host Ben Brock Johnson about the potential upsides of technonaturalism.
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Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell.
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In 2017, Rhett Barker and his friends needed a way to stay in touch after graduating college. They were ecology majors, and meme groups were in vogue, so they created Wild Green Memes for Ecological Fiends on Facebook.
It began as a place to share silly nature-centered memes. The jokes were comically esoteric: about, say, the scientific name of a rare wild feline or the bites of Brazilian wandering spiders. You needed to know the science to laugh.
In spite of this â or because of it â the group attracted hundreds of thousands of fans from around the world. Now the group is a sprawling ecosystem of memelords with a ârelentlessly optimisticâ take on the natural world. Rhett decided to put the groupâs popularity to good use. The results were overwhelming.
Endless Thread examines the psychology of conservation online and how people are using hope, fear, and humor to repair the planet.
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Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Matt Reed. The hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell.
P.S. Thanks to Derek for the rad story rec!
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In 2016, followers flocked to an Instagram user purporting to be Miquela Sousa, a 19-year-old Brazilian-American model, singer, and sometimes activist.
For years, no one was quite sure if Miquela was made-up, or to what degree. Was she a model rendered doll-like by filters? An actress? A totally fictional character?
Her ambiguous humanity helped Miquela land lucrative brand partnerships with the likes of BMW and Calvin Klein. But in recent years, interest in her has been slipping. Writer Mercedes Gonzales-Bazan joins Endless Thread to talk about Miquela's mysterious origin story, and what her declining relevance reveals about our current relationship with AI.
You can read Mercedes Gonzales-Bazan's essay, Death of the Artificial Influencer, here.
Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The host is Ben Brock Johnson.
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The halls of science, known for prim propriety and careful debate, are feuding. A new theory of gravity challenges Einstein's general relativity, our current understanding of that thing that keeps our feet on the ground. Physicists are upset.
"Cotton gravity"ânamed in honor of mathematician Ămile Cotton, not fluffy floraâwas first posited by Japanese researcher Junpei Harada in 2021. The idea, which modifies general relativity and discounts the theory of dark matter, spurred a surprisingly catty argument on arXiv.org, an open-access website for scientific preprints.
Things got nerdy. And hilarious. Endless Thread explains.
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Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell.
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Shaquille O'Neal has some advice: "If you are going to retire, accept it. Enjoy your family," he recently said on The Big Podcast With Shaq. "I made a lot of dumb mistakes to where I lost my family. I don't have anybody."
His statement, directed at retiring NFL star Jason Kelce, raised concern online. "What happened with Shaq?" asked one Reddit user in a popular thread. "I thought he was [a] super nice guy. Why is he all alone?"
The former four-time NBA champion has developed several personas since the Orlando Magic drafted him in 1992. On the court, he was a giant. Online, he became something different. Endless Thread breaks down the many sides of Shaq to answer the question, Is he OK?
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Credits: This episode was written and produced by Ben Brock Johnson with help from Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The hosts are Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson.
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In the second part of Endless Thread's investigation into a ubiquitous online piano academy, we dig into why some people think it's a front to recruit students to the Church of Scientology and track down the man behind the piano himself.
Credits: This episode was written and produced by Grace Tatter with mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson are the co-hosts.
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You may have seen this ad: A frenetic, wild-haired concert pianist says he can make any newbie a virtuoso in months. Just take his online course for $3,000.
Too good to be true? Redditors thought so. Posts dating back years cried scam. Some went further and claimed his virtual piano academy is a cover to recruit Scientologists.
In Part 1 of "The Music Man," Endless Thread investigates.
Credits: This episode was written and produced by Grace Tatter with mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson are the co-hosts.
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