Endless Thread

With new and exotic species available at the click of a button, the digital age forever changed the multimillion-dollar arachnid industry. What has that meant for spiders?

Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mixing, sound design, and original music by Matt Reed. Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell are the co-hosts.

(Henrik Sorensen/Getty Images)

Hey, threadheads. It's a different day than we'd normally be in your feed, and we HAVE... something different for you!

It's the first episode of a new series from WBUR, our home station, of course, and The Trace. It's called "The Gun Machine," and it's an 8-part series about the history of the gun industry in America and the industry's biggest supporter... THE GOVERNMENT.

This first episode is all about how the United States has shaped, and been shaped by, the gun industry — and how we all play a role.

A trigger warning... some actual triggers get pulled in this episode. You'll hear that. So take care. And you dig it, the second episode is already waiting for you. Just search for "The Gun Machine" wherever you listen to Endless Thread.

https://link.chtbl.com/thegunmachine

Host Ben Brock Johnson and producer Quincy Walters go to an historic Boston cemetery to try out findagrave.com — a volunteer-generated database of millions of graves throughout the world.

At the cemetery, Ben and Quincy have a hard time finding anyone who's ever heard of the site that's been around since 1995. Despite this, Quincy makes the argument that Find a Grave is one of the first social media sites that doesn't get the respect it deserves. "But how is it social media if no one knows about it?" Ben asks.

Then the pair encounter a veteran user of the site. After that, they get ahold of the guy who started Find a Grave. Does he think Find a Grave is social media? Find out in this episode of Endless Thread. 

Back in 2013, the sand dunes of Michigan City, Indiana swallowed a six-year-old boy. It took rescuers nearly 4 hours to dig him out of 12 feet of sand. It was a phenomenon that scientists hadn't studied in-depth. But Facebook recreational naturalists were on the case.

In this episode of Endless Thread, producer Grace Tatter and host Ben Brock Johnson go down an internet rabbit hole and bring bring us an explanation of what happened, the coexistence of miracles and science and even the including the six-year-old boy who's now an adult.

"We're pro-portal and we're pro- tree hole," Ben says. "Basically anywhere there's space, we want to explore it."

Back in 2004, NBC’s 'To Catch a Predator' captivated millions of viewers as it followed a vigilante group called Perverted Justice, which has a goal to thwart pedophiles searching the internet for minors. Adult volunteers go online to pose as minors in order to, well, catch predators. Three years later, amid its growing popularity, it came to an end. But nearly two decades later, it's inspired a genre of influencers who have tried to fill the void.

The popular YouTube channel Lofi Girl provides a 24/7 livestream of chill beats to relax and study.

Endless Thread producer Nora Ruth Valerie Saks and co-host Ben Brock Johnson look at how the Lofi Girl phenomenon has expanded into a record company, inspired copycats, and prompted academic research.

On Discord and YouTube, hundreds of Gen-Zers are teaming up for the purposes finding and archiving the Muzak (aka elevator music) that played in the plaza and lobby and mall of the Twin Towers. 

On this 22nd anniversary of 9/11,  join Endless Thread in an episode where teens and young 20-somethings collect the seemingly innocuous sonic artifacts of the original World Trade Center people thought were lost and the lengths they've gone to find them.

The cover art for the 1976 paperback edition of Madeleine L'Engle's classic 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!

A Redditor proposed a quick fix to one of humanity’s greatest threats. But the real threat may be our fixation with quick fixes.

Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson are the co-hosts.

(Photo by George Rose/Getty Images)

As of late, Endless Thread co-host Ben Brock Johnson has been obsessed with a rock in Wyoming, a lot like the protagonist of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But you won't find Ben in the kitchen, making a replica of the rock out of mud and chicken wire. Instead you'll find him and co-host Amory Sivertson in this episode, traversing Reddit and TikTok and YouTube and Wyoming to find out why hundreds of thousands of people have been drawn to a monolith that has so many names and meanings.