Ear rumblers assemble!

More from Endless Thread All episodes →

1. 

   9 Oct 2026 · 33 min

   Remembering Brooke Eby

   "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 built an audience of hundreds of thousands of people who were rooting for, and laughing with, her. Sometimes it got weird. Brooke died due to complications with ALS earlier this month. She was 37. In 2025, she talked to Endless Thread hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson about how facing death changed her relationship with social media and online community. Show notes:…

2. 

   2 Oct 2026 · 25 min

   Mixed signals: Nextdoor villains and the holiday you've never heard of

   The internet is the great connector. Talk with nearly anyone at any time about anything. But that kind of freedom can lead to misunderstandings. Maybe your neighbors discover your cruder, less friendly persona online. Maybe a debate over holiday lore becomes a battle front. Endless Thread producers Grace Tatter and Frannie Monahan bring two stories to remind us that the internet is a morass of information that no one can ever control. Show notes: " How I became the villain of El Cerrito’s Nextdoor " (Oakland Review of Books) Bomellida FAQ (GitHub) This content was originally created for…

3. 

   25 Sep 2026 · 16 min

   The Haruhi problem

   Get out your graphing calculators, because today's episode of Endless Thread is about a math problem. Specifically: wt(π1, . . . , πm) = m−1 ∑ i=1 wt(πi , πi+1) Now, pencils down. Stumped? So were mathematicians for decades. That is, until the equation was solved in a thread on 4Chan about watching the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Show notes: A lower bound on the length of the shortest superpattern (oeis.org) Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So: The Secret of Japanese Cooking Basics (Umami Insider) This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple…

4. 

   18 Sep 2026 · 33 min

   Keeping the Lights on at a Video Game Cafe in Southern Yemen

   Mo lives in Aden, an ancient city in southern Yemen. Built on a volcanic crater, it has castles and beaches set against mountains. It's beautiful. Like the rest of the country, it is also in the midst of an ongoing civil war. This summer, protests broke out over living conditions and basic services in the city -- like electricity, which can be shut off for 18 hours at a time. But despite these conditions, for the last five years, Mo has been fighting for a persistent dream of his –– a video game internet cafe for his neighborhood. This week on Endless Thread Ben and Amory tell the story of…

5. 

   4 Sep 2026 · 25 min

   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 neighbor: an owl. What wasn't clear was whether the owl was trying to befriend them, or catch them. Sometimes the owl seemed to be chasing students. Other times, it seemed to come in peace. A popular campus Instagram account reported that a woman had actually raised the owl herself. After she was spotted feeding it, the owl sightings stopped, much to the disappointment of students who'd come to consider it as a sort of mascot. Where had the owl come from,…

6. 

   28 Aug 2026 · 26 min

   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. First, Emily introduces us to the intergalactic world of astronaut fan fiction, starring the crew of the 2026 Artemis II moon mission. Then, Ben takes us through the r/Science discourse on a new LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) study mapping an ancient Amazonian civilization. Show notes: Short Wave (NPR) Between change and upgrade (Artemis II fan fiction, Wattpad) Scientists Uncover Hundreds of Hidden Structures Beneath The Amazon…

7. 

   21 Aug 2026 · 28 min

   '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 flight when the captain gave an announcement: everyone had to turn off their Bluetooth devices — or he was going to turn around the plane. This confounded passengers, because Bluetooth is safe for airplanes. It stays enabled when devices are on airplane mode. United even encourages using Bluetooth headphones to connect to in-flight entertainment. What was going on? The flight crew couldn't say. So the passengers took to...where else? Reddit. Show…

8. 

   14 Aug 2026 · 45 min

   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 store racks or at least in ads. Now, in your mind's eye, picture it. What do you see? For years, countless people have been taking to the internet to share their memory of the Fruit of the Loom logo. A lot of them have the same memory – a basket, rather, a cornucopia of fruit. But they're all wrong. At least, Fruit of the Loom claims that is has never had a cornucopia in its logo and there is little concrete evidence to suggest that the brand…

9. 

   7 Aug 2026 · 29 min

   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 digs into why the internet is so hungry for perpetual stews (a stew that is simmered and added on to in perpetuity). Then, Grace dishes on a listener conundrum about whether salty Reddit posts are worse for us than sweet ones. Show notes: ZAQ_Makes' Stewtheus (TikTok) Want to try perpetual stew? Some tips for avoiding foodborne illness (NPR) r/GirlDinnerDiaries (Reddit) Does Venting Your Feelings Actually Help? (Greater Good Magazine) Endless…