Endless Thread

Is your voice your own? Not anymore. This week on Endless Thread, we present "Deepfake Dallas," courtesy of our friends over at Twenty Thousand Hertz, a podcast revealing the stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds. Find out how someone, using artificial intelligence, can make an algorithm that sounds just like you.

One of the things that makes Starbucks so liked by people everywhere is the amount of customization you can do with your drink. But is there such a thing as too much customization? On this week's Snacktime, Amory tells Ben about the viral "Edward" order as well as the recent TikTok trend of ordering a drink from Starbucks' "secret menu."

From knitting to making bread, many of us found new ways to relax during the pandemic. For some, this happy place came in the form of a shower orange. In this episode of Snacktime, Ben tells Amory about what this new trend is all about, plus the story of how one Reddit user saved the day by overthinking.

In 2008, college student Kevin Toomey was cruising around Columbus, Ohio, listening to AM radio, when a jingle for Rotolo's Pizza came on. It was love at first listen, and it set him on a 13-year quest to find out who wrote and performed the jingle. In this Snacktime episode, Amory tells Ben about the mystery and its delicious conclusion.

Today's episode brings together three of our favorite things: mysteries, cultural deep-dives, and Dungeons & Dragons. It's an episode of Cautionary Tales, a podcast from Pushkin that tells stories of awful human error, tragic catastrophes, daring heists and hilarious fiascos of the past -- pointing out valuable lessons for us from all the dithering, death and destruction.

In this Snacktime episode, Ben and Amory talk about vaccine passports in Texas and the out-of-this-world contents of a mysterious box.

In this Snacktime episode, we explore a post made on r/HobbyDrama about how some local plant-trading Facebook groups have had their wholesome hobby corrupted by an alleged scammer.

We're cooking up a new season of Endless Thread as we speak. But in the meantime, we realized we could probably all use a "snack" to hold us over. In this episode, we hear about a Redditor who created a fake press pass and found himself in a war zone, and another who accidentally assembled an army of crows. 

The subreddit r/WallStreetBets has been at the center of a national story this week involving GameStop and a couple of angry hedge funds. To help us understand what’s happening, we call up Planet Money co-host Robert Smith. Then, we speak to Redditor u/Hungry_Freaks-Daddy who hopped on board the GameStop train earlier this week and says he has nothing to lose. 

In "Anything For Selena," host Maria Garcia takes listeners on a deeply personal journey into the life and legacy of the Mexican-American popstar Selena Quintanilla, how Selena's music and unapologetic sense of identity helped her find her own place in the world, and how Selena's legacy continues to spark important conversations around race, class, and body politics.