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PODCAST

Endless Thread

Untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL. Hosted by Ben Brock Johnson & Amory Sivertson.

technology

All Episodes

00:38:06

Episodes we love: Lofi Girl

Endless Thread ·

2025/11/11

This November, we're playing some of our favorite episodes from the past alongside new stuff, so that newer listeners can experience our back catalogue. And LoFi Girl is one that holds up, big time!If you've ever searched for "chill beats for studying" or some other form of lean back, endless playlists without vocals and with a consistent vibe, you've probably come across "Lofi Girl." A livestreamed Youtube channel featuring a looped animation of a girl in a cosy apartment on her desk at night,

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00:27:01

Labubus, lafufus, and Hello Kitty: How cuteness...

Endless Thread ·

2025/11/07

While some people find Labubus terrifying, millions of others find their big eyes and furry features irresistibly adorable. Why? From Labubu dolls taking over TikTok, to emoji taking over our text messages, cuteness is all over the internet. Ben and Amory talk to Joshua Paul Dale, professor at Tokyo's Chuo University and the preeminent cuteness expert about how cute has conquered all.Show notes: Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World (Profile Books) The Cute Studies

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00:33:46

Episodes we love: Welcome to the Jam

Endless Thread ·

2025/11/04

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 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 website 'Space Jam' Forever: The Website That Wouldn't Die (Rolling Stone) The TIL post on Reddit Hollywood in Pixels SpaceJamCheck on X Teach

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00:38:04

Endless Dread: Haunted Hayride

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/31

In keeping with Endless Thread tradition, Ben and Amory are celebrating spooky season with another installment of "Endless Dread." This time, we're bringing you along on both an actual haunted hayride — thanks to McCray's Farm in South Hadley, MA — and a digital one, through a handful of spooky stories from the internet.Ben introduces Amory to a TikTok commentary on recent ICE raids disguised as a parody of consumerism. Amory tells Ben about an auditory illusion that has risen from the dead

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00:46:10

Episodes we love: Artist Known — Illustrator for 'A...

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/28

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 edition of Madeleine L'Engle's classic, spooky sci-fi/fantasy novel "A Wrinkle in Time" — featuring a rainbow-winged centaur and a green, glowering, red-eyed face — is iconic. And yet, for nearly 50 years, no one has known who illustrated it. Well, not NO ONE. Not anymore... Endless Thread cracks the case!

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00:40:38

Hidden Levels Ep. 6: Segagaga

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/24

The final episode of Hidden Levels explores the story of SEGA developer Tez Okano and the bizarre, meta-game he created: Segagaga.Okano joined SEGA in 1992, witnessing firsthand the company's tumultuous experience in the "console wars" against Nintendo and Sony. In the mid-1990s, SEGA struggled to make hardware that kept up with its rivals. The SEGA CD, the 32X, and the Saturn were all commercial failures. For Okano and many developers at SEGA, the console wars were both an exciting time to be in

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00:41:47

Hidden Levels Ep. 5: Press B to Touch Grass

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/22

Video games are arguably the antithesis of nature; highly constructed worlds, synthetic, inorganic. If you grew up gaming, you may recall grown-ups telling you to shut down the console, go outside, and touch some grass.These days, though, touching grass isn’t something you have to do outside. As gaming has grown into a 200 billion dollar industry, the boundary between screen and soil has muddied. New technologies and types of play are getting gamers ever-closer to the experience of real nature

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00:24:34

Surgical Precision: One doctor's quest to show how...

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/21

Dr. James "Butch" Rosser was a pioneer in minimally invasive surgery in the 1990s. When he credited his surgical skills to video games, people dismissed him. The prevailing narrative was that kids who played video games became killers, not doctors. So Butch set out on quest: to show how video games can help make better doctors.Show notes: The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st century (JAMA Surgery) Study: High-School Video Gamers Match Physicians at Robotic-Surgery

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00:45:08

Hidden Levels Ep. 4: Machinima

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/18

Machinima — a portmanteau of “machine” and “cinema” — refers to movies filmed inside video games. The art form had a renaissance in the 1990s, and many thought it had a future in Hollywood. Among the early pioneers were the New York animation collective the Ill Clan, who puppeteered characters in real-time inside the video game Quake, bypassing traditional animation rendering. This technique exploded into a cultural phenomenon through the 2000s with hits like Red vs. Blue, South Park’s Emmy-winning

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00:31:25

Hidden Levels: Choose Your Player (Side Quest)

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/17

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 gaming — often combining the two with her otherworldly video game-inspired beauty tutorials.Growing up in small-town Ontario, though, Stef was a quiet, introverted kid who was bullied a lot. For one thing, she looked different from her peers. Having been born with a rare genetic condition called Waardenburg Syndrome, Stef has several distinct physical

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00:44:10

Hidden Levels Ep. 3: This Game Wants YOU

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/14

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 to combat recruiting concerns, the Army has turned its focus online: to the world of gaming and competitive eSports.With nearly 80% of Americans between the ages of 13 and 28 playing video games weekly, the Army has identified this community as a vital demographic for potential recruits. The core goal of this outreach is to use gaming as an entry

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00:41:36

Hidden Levels Ep. 2: Stick It to 'Em

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/10

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 game consoles like the Atari 2600, to the Nintendo 64 thumbstick in the 1990s, to what some consider the joystick's greatest implementation: the dual-thumbstick controller.This optimal interface has changed the game, and not just the video game. The modern dual-stick controller is now considered an MVP in the military, and in medicine.

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00:37:16

Hidden Levels Ep. 1: Mr. Boomshakalaka

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/07

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 impacted the world beyond. We’ll dive deep into how games are made and designed, exploring everything from the history of the joystick to the faithful recreation of nature in digital spaces.Whether you are a lifelong gamer or have never picked up a controller, "Hidden Levels" uncovers how games have quietly changed culture, technology, and the way we see

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00:05:08

Announcing 'Hidden Levels': how the videogame world...

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/06

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 acting like an NPC when they're a real person? Maybe you know that the first real "in-app" purchase was actually a weapons store in an arcade game version of Double Dragon 3. Wherever you go in the real world, you can find signs of the influence of videogames. But you have to know where to look. That's why Endless Thread and 99% Invisible are launching a

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00:30:42

A fork (still) in the road

Endless Thread ·

2025/10/03

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 establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency back in January and the "restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force" that came with it, as announced in an email sent to nearly all federal employees with the subject line, "Fork in the Road."Federal workers have found community in the FedNews subreddit: "A vital, independent hub for U.S

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00:27:49

Bridezillas and Quiz Traps

Endless Thread ·

2025/09/26

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 to a weekday in another state. Amory counters with a teacher who used AI to foil his student's cheating. Petty or just? You be the judge.Credits: This episode was produced by Frannie Monahan. It was co-hosted by Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

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00:37:00

Losing Our Marbles

Endless Thread ·

2025/09/19

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 wonders: where is she, and is she okay? We investigate the mystery behind one of YouTube's biggest disappearances, and why people still care so much.Show notes: r/JennaMarbles (Reddit) The Best, Fakest, and Most Teary Influencer Apologies of 2020 (Vulture) How to trick people into thinking you're good looking (YouTube) An Authentic Guide to

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00:24:24

Message In A Laptop

Endless Thread ·

2025/09/12

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 the cloud? Do you ever low key snoop in the old electronics of other people, searching for treasure?That's what Noah Simmons was doing a while back when he discovered something compelling in its simplicity: a homework assignment document, on an old laptop picked up at an estate sale. The title of the essay? "My Secret Place." From there, the

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00:39:47

Encore: The Internet's Most Hated Bird

Endless Thread ·

2025/09/05

As summer fades away, we bring you an encore episode about you shoreline companions and occasional bullies — gulls.Gulls are not beloved creatures. Consult social media, where they are deemed relentless, dirty pests who steal our food and crowd our beaches. As one TikTok user puts it, "Seagulls are the worst animals to ever exist." Such hatred overlooks truths about this intelligent, charismatic animal, and it is masking a big problem: While gulls may seem like they are everywhere, many species

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00:31:46

Introducing "Jaws Island"

Endless Thread ·

2025/08/29

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 the cinematic classic... DUN dun dun dun DUN dun dun dun..."Jaws!"Part 1 of this mini-series, Jaws Island, is right here, right now, and it's all about the "finatics" (yes, that's what they call themselves). WBUR arts and culture correspondent Andrea Shea takes us to Martha's Vineyard — AKA "Amity Island," where Jaws was filmed — for the 50th

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