When you think of rapper Afroman, chances are his early 2000s hit song "Because I Got High" is already playing in your mind. More than two decades later, his music has once again broken containment. Host Ben Brock Johnson and producer Grace Tatter dig into how Afroman turned a police raid and defamation trial into another moment of internet virality.

A woman sitting blissfully on a vibrating laundromat dryer. A faked pregnancy test to dump a bad boyfriend. In 2019, the internet was abuzz about bizarre ads for a mobile game called Lily's Garden. The ads were only about 15 seconds each, but they evoked a whole universe of drama amongst a cast of zany characters that inspired countless YouTube videos and copious internet chatter.

The thing is... the story in the ads had almost nothing to do with the story in the game. In this episode of Endless Thread: creative differences, the wilderness of mobile games, and where the Lily's Garden game-world and the ad-world diverged.

Sharing a photo of yourself online has always carried some risk. But things got a lot scarier this year when users began using Grok, X's generative AI chatbot to create sexualized deepfakes of women and children. Iona Fyfe, Scottish folk singer and activist, was one of the people who had an image altered and manipulated by Grok. Hosts Ben and Amory talk to her about her experience.

Some rare folks are born with the perfect music taste. But most of us have to look elsewhere for a tune that sparks a shoulder shimmy or two. Hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson spend some time jamming to obscure music from Reddit. They also explore how a TikTok original became Dr. Pepper's catchy new jingle.

And "baby, it's good and nice."

Melania, a documentary about the First Lady, has a 10 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, but a 90 percent score from audience members, an unusual discrepancy that raises the question, how did Rotten Tomatoes get those scores anyway?

Show notes:

The 'Melania' movie audience: Older white women(NPR)
Melania’s Movie Shows Signs of Bulk Buying to Boost Box Office: Guru (The Daily Beast)
You Can Thank 'Rush Hour' for Rotten Tomatoes (Vice)
Rotten Tomatoes Owner Says ‘Melania’ 99% Audience Score Is Not ‘Bot Manipulation’: ‘Reviews Are Verified… Users Bought a Ticket to the Film’ (Variety)

In this OG throwback from the Endless Thread archives, hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson revisit a classic episode from their first year of production in 2018.

Originally produced during the show's early partnership with Reddit, "Love in Transition" explores the most powerful emotion in the universe in all its forms, shapes and sizes. This might just be your perfect listen for this weekend, celebrating a timeless story about affection and the many ways we experience love today.

In the 1980s, a moral panic swept across America. Parents, prosecutors, and talk show hosts became convinced that devil worshippers were hiding in plain sight, abusing children at daycares, performing ritualistic sacrifices, and corrupting the innocent.

Sarah Marshall of You're Wrong About has a new podcast about this period of Satanic Panic called The Devil You Know. She talks to Ben and Amory about the cultural forces that turned unfounded fears into a nationwide hysteria, and how Satanic Panic might have unfolded differently in today's age of social media.

What temperature do you like your fruit? What is the correct way to peel a banana? This week on Endless Thread, Ben and Amory cherry pick a couple of the hottest fruit debates taking place on Reddit.

In 1970, a young biologist named David Mech published what could be the most consequential book on wolves ever written. At the time, "The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species" was the most complete collection of scientific knowledge on wolves money could buy, and it became a bestseller for Dave's publishers. But outside of the world of wolf biology, the book is also credited with unleashing a certain idea into our popular lexicon: The Alpha.

The thing is, Dave made a mistake – and the alpha wolf doesn't exist.

This week on Endless Thread, Ben and Amory track down the origins of "the alpha" and whether this idea – which has been recanted by the very scientist who popularized it – has any legitimacy when applied to people.

Fast-and-cheap shipping is now foundational to the American way of life, thanks in large part to Amazon Prime. Still, when producer Grace Tatter sees a video of a man claiming that he's continuously ordering and returning an 110-pound anvil from Amazon with no repercussions from the tech giant, she has questions. Is this legit, or is it a Wile E. Coyote-level scheme? Unlike an anvil, the answer can't be found online.

Show notes:

"this guy has been buying and returning 110lb anvils on Amazon for 8 months now"(Reddit)
This man keeps buying and returning 110-pound anvils on Amazon (Fast Company)
Johnbo's TikTok

This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

This episode was originally published on Nov. 13, 2020.

This new year, we revisit a story with a timeless message.

Ten years ago, Justin found himself on the side of the road with a blown-out tire. Hours went by, and no one stopped to help. Just as he was about to give up, something changed Justin forever.

Anyone who remembers road trips before GPS devices will say... nothing because we're still looking for them! We jest, but there's no denying that these tools changed our lives. One in particular dominates the space today, and it took the world by storm when it launched 20 years ago: Google Maps.

In this episode, we go back to 2005 and another storm — Hurricane Katrina. We hear from three Redditors who used Google Maps and Google Earth to survey the damage to their homes in the days and weeks after Katrina made landfall.

We also talk to the Map Men, geography-loving comedians and co-authors of "This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (And Why It Matters)," who ask, "Could it be that the best maps humanity has ever produced are simultaneously the worst maps for humanity?"

The internet decides what's for dinner.

Ruby Tandoh is the author of the new book, All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now. A stint on the Great British Bake Off when she was in college launched her into the world of cookbooks — increasingly irrelevant in a world where we're more likely to turn to Google for a recipe than turn to our bookshelves — and provided her an education in how pop culture stokes our cravings. She takes Ben and Amory on a journey from the surprising history of AllRecipes and the "world's best lasagna," to the TikTok food trends of today. (Spoiler: they don't always taste particularly good.)

Forget Black Friday shopping. We all know what the day after Thanksgiving is really about — the leftover sandwich! And so, we're revisiting an episode from the beginning of this year with someone who knows that the best thing since sliced bread is what you put between it.

Endless Thread serves up two of Reddit's most absurd food sagas. First course: Chivegate, in which a Redditor vows to chop a cup of chives daily until the kitchen confidential subreddit declares perfection, only to be accused of fraud. Second course: A Reddit user desperately seeking advice on how to quietly move 13 two-thousand-pound pallets of margarine.

Ben and Amory share two stories about some out-of-the-box internet trolling. First, Amory tries to untangle a web of rumors surrounding an unusual dish from New Zealand. Then, Ben takes us aboard Terri's Tourz, an alleged Everglade tourist attraction claiming to offer the nation's first ever tours of the South Florida Detention Center known as Alligator Alcatraz.

Credits:

Episode producer: Nora Saks with Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell

Co-hosts: Ben Brock Johnson and Nora Saks

Show producers: Amory Sivertson, Samata Joshi, Grace Tatter, and Frannie Monahan

Web producer: Dean Russell

Mixer and sound designer: Paul Vaitkus

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, the channel has brought in millions upon millions of views and subscribers. It's also the big bang for an expanding universe, from additional channels and streams featuring slightly different animated characters and music genres, to copycats, to memes and lore - including stories about a mysterious French music producer, Dimitri.

Credits:

Episode producer: Grace Tatter

Editor: Meg Cramer

Co-hosts: Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson

Show producers: Samata Joshi, Dean Russell, Paul Vaitkus, and Frannie Monahan.

Mixer and sound designer: Emily Jankowski

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.

Everybody get up, it's time to slam now. We've got a real jam going down in the Endless Thread feed, where we've resurrected a slam dunk of an episode for folks who are new to the show. Enjoy! Credits:

Episode producer: Amory Sivertson

Co-hosts: Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson

Show producers: Samata Joshi, Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, Frannie Monahan, Paul Vaitkus

Mixer and sound designer: Emily Jankowski

In the early 1990s, Don Buckley was a marketing executive for Warner Brothers by day, and by night? An explorer. "It was just curiosity and the drive towards discovery," Don says.

The source of Don's, and many others' curiosity at this time, was the burgeoning — but not yet mainstream — Internet. "This is a way to communicate with people that we haven't seen before," Don marveled. He started connecting the dots between his evening online exploration and his day job. In 1994, he converted the marketing materials for Warner Brothers' scandal-thriller film "Disclosure" into an interactive digital product. What Don had just built was one of the first movie websites. He showed it to the film's director who responded with, "What the f*** is this?," Don says. "He couldn't care less."

But Don Buckley was onto something. He kept building movie websites and, soon, hired himself a team: senior producer Dara Kubovy-Weiss (then Dara-Lynn Weiss), designer Jen Braun, coder and copywriter Michael Tritter, and design intern Andrew Stachler. They made sites for the movies "Twister," "Mars Attacks," "Eraser," "Joe's Apartment," among others. The approach for all of them, Don says, was to build a "narrative extension of the story being told in the film."

In 1996, that team had an especially big movie to market starring the Looney Tunes and NBA legend Michael Jordan: "Space Jam." What differentiates this site from the rest is something so unlikely that it sparked a viral moment of collective glee among nostalgic "Space Jam" fans and web nerds alike: this 29-year-old website is still up. Not only that, but the site still looks and functions today exactly as it did in 1996.

At the bottom of the website's "Site Map" is a simple yellow star icon with the caption, "Never on the Internet have so few worked so hard to bring you so much in so little time." Endless Thread needed to more. In this episode, Amory and Ben have a hilarious and gloriously chaotic conversation with the five people that brought us the surprisingly-enduring "Space Jam" website.

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 (Twitter) to unsettle the living (TikTokers and Redditors), and about a "vampire" from Rhode Island who was exhumed and turned into a tonic to cure tuberculosis. Spoiler alert: it didn't work.

This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.