Endless Thread

The cover art for the 1976 paperback edition of Madeleine L'Engle's classic sci-fi/fantasy novel "A Wrinkle in Time" — featuring a winged centaur and a 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.

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.

Two years ago, he didn’t even know slime molds existed. Now, he may be the internet’s most famous slime savant.

"To avoid crowds, visit areas that are less crowded." These comically obvious words come from the Twitter account of the National Park Service, who has been hitting it out of the park lately (get it?) with its social media content. Who is behind this material? And why has a government agency chosen to let its hair down on social media? 

Scumbag Steve spread across the internet like wildfire in 2011. But the full story of what happened to Blake Boston has never been told. In this episode, we go past the meme's origin story and learn about Blake’s struggles with PTSD and abuse — and how trauma has brought him and his mother closer. 

In times like these, you've got to take joy wherever and however you can get it. Amory and Ben swap unexpected sources of joy they've bumped into recently — from a goblin-themed Reddit post, to the scariest toe talons on the internet, to a funky 1980's little-known bop about going to the beach on Massachusetts' North Shore.

Imagine if an explosion in California was so loud that it could be heard in New York City. This is the story of a real event that was just as loud — the loudest sound ever recorded in human history.

The first documented bar joke was copied onto a clay tablet 4,000 years ago in the ancient language of Sumerian. Scholars have translated it, but the meaning remains lost. After the Twitter account @DepthsOfWiki posted the joke in March, thousands of people attempted to decipher it to no avail. Yet, as cryptic as the bar joke may be, it offers clues into humor’s role in human civilizations and raises questions about when humor — and its sibling laughter — first emerged...

A 4,000-year-old Sumerian proverb about a dog that walks into a tavern has left scholars and thousands of online commenters scratching their heads. The joke’s meaning has been lost, but finding it could reveal something unique about early human civilization and the origins of humor.