Endless Thread

At any given time, 110 people can tell you exactly where James Tatter is.

Every single iPhone user has the Find My app on their phone, which allows them to share their location with friends and family. Increasingly, for young people like James, it's becoming also a form of social media.

Endless Thread producer (and James's sister) Grace Tatter wanted to know how something that seems creepy to some people became so commonplace...

Endless Thread is thrilled to introduce you to a new podcast from our friends at NHPR’s Document team. That’s the team behind other great narrative shows like Bear Brook and The 13th Step.

For the past six months, NHPR reporter Todd Bookman has been spending a lot of time thinking about… a cat. This cat’s name is Sergeant Tibbs – he’s 19.

Tibbs goes missing… and lands in the center of a lot of human pain, confusion… and inter...

There's a conspiracy theory on Reddit right now suggesting that Reddit is using aggressive tools to hide posts praising or supporting Luigi Mangione's alleged execution-style killing of the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson. Endless Thread looks at what is going on with Luigi memes on this platform: the Nintendo character memes… and the other ones.

Show notes:

A Reddit moderation tool is flagging ‘Luigi’ as potentially...

Have you ever been deepfaked? Or maybe this is just a new fear – that photos of you end up online that are you – but not really you? What would you do? For an increasing number of people – especially women – this is becoming a reality.

So much so that a recent bill in Congress called the “Take It Down” Act has found some incredibly rare bipartisan support. The bill is sponsored by republican Senator Ted Cruz and democrat Senator...

In April of 2024, a group of aid workers were killed by Israeli Defense Forces while bringing food to Central Gaza. The IDF had alleged that its military analysts had identified a gunman on top of one of the trucks carrying supplies, suggesting it was a military vehicle, not an aid vehicle.

In the online debate following the event, a familiar trope popped up: arguing over whether one of the aid trucks a Toyota Hilux. The reason?...

Well, the messaging app Signal has been in the news recently, thanks to a snafu in which prominent federal defense officials mistakenly added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a group chat in which they discussed military strikes in Yemen.

This whole situation reminds us of another conversation we've been having as a team about how to responsibly leak information to the press, and if there is such a thing as a...

There are moments that define each of our lives. Some we can predict: graduations, marriages, births, death.  Others? Not so much.

And in the year 2025, sometimes, if the stars align just so, you may find that moment explode online.

That's what happened to 23-year-old Adrián Simancas. Last month, he was paddling the Straight of Magellan, with his father Dell, when the unimaginable happened: a humpback whale emerged from the w...

Last week, we introduced you to the wildly popular, albeit controversial, streamer and self-declared socialist Hasan Piker — what he’s all about, how he’s delivering his message to millions of followers, and who he’s reaching and resonating with.

When we talked to him in November, Hasan had a lot to say about the Democratic Party, about the streaming platform Twitch, and about what’s further dividing Americans right now. So here...

Every day, seven days a week, for eight hours or more, Hasan Piker is live on the video game streaming platform Twitch. This is where he shares his political commentary with a dedicated community of viewers — many of whom fall into a particularly sought-after electoral demographic: young men.

One of the dominant theories about the re-election of President Donald Trump in November 2024 was that it was aided by commentators like P...

"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's since built an audience of hundreds of thousands of people who are rooting for, and laughing with, her. Sometimes it gets weird. Brooke talks to Ben and Amory about how facing death changed her relationship with ...

Everybody get up, it's time to slam now! Yes, this episode is about the 1996 movie "Space Jam," starring NBA legend Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes. Rather, it's about the website for "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 web...

We’re coming to you with a special offering today. It’s an episode about the internet… from our friends just a few cubicles over here at WBUR: On Point.

Hosted by Meghna Chakrabarti, On Point is a unique, curiosity-driven combination of original reporting, newsmaker interviews, first-person stories, and in-depth analysis, making the world more intelligible and humane. When the wor...

Wanda Brewer was grieving. After losing her brother, she found comfort in an unexpected place: a soap-opera-esque story on Instagram told in 60-second increments. The story? A mafia boss torn between power, family and love.

Wanda’s not alone. Millions are bingeing these bite-sized, ultra-dramatic vertical shorts, where sexy werewolves, ruthless billionaires, and love triangles unfold one minute at a time — hooking viewers with c...

In 2022, people around the world freaked out at the advent of ChatGPT, OpenAI's chatbot. In under three years, artificial intelligence has been incorporated almost everywhere in our online lives. But training the large language models, or LLMs, that power these AI assistants is hugely expensive. Or is it? Last month, a Chinese startup called DeepSeek released their own AI app for much less money, potentially with huge economic and ...

Sometimes, after a long day speaking English, former WBUR podcast fellow Cici Yu just wants to zone out and spend time on the internet where everyone is speaking her native language, Chinese. Her app of choice? Xiaohongshu, or RedNote. So, when Cici logged on recently to find a feed filled with English-speaking Americans, she was surprised.

Show notes:

"The great social media migration: Sudden influx of US users t...

There's a burning question that keeps coming up in internet communities, YouTube explainers, and interviews with stunt people from the film industry: does Steven Seagal actually know martial arts?

In our current news environment, where conspiracy theories abound and the truth can feel elusive, this somewhat silly question keeps getting asked. But as we explore the answer, we find that perhaps the confusion about Steven Seagal's ...

It's 2025. HBO's "Dune: Prophecy" is one of the most popular shows streaming, and the federal government just announced massive spending on artificial intelligence. The inspiration for "Dune: Prophecy" is in part a prophecy, of sorts, from 1872: One about humans becoming subservient to "thinking machines." What can a 150-year-old text teach us about the current AI revolution?

Credits: This episode...

If you typed “inauguration” into your web browser anytime between 2017 and 2020, you likely saw an image of a person in a neon green jacket, black winter hat and glasses screaming “Nooooooooooo!” That person was Jess, who was in Washington D.C. on January 20, 2017 to protest the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

Jess told their story to Endless Thread in 2021. This week, we're revisiting that episode in advance of Donald T...

Kashif Hoda was getting onto a Southbound train at Harvard Square when a young man said he recognized him. The doors closed before he got a chance to ask the young man how, or who he was. A month later, the answer came in the form of a viral video.

Harvard students AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardefyio modified Meta's smart glasses so that you can search someone's face quickly, almost without them knowing, and pull up personal intern...