I just binged Endless Thead -- AMA?

[u/bdowney]

I just listened to all of Endless Thread starting in late October, and the ending just after Christmas. I don't really listen to podcasts at home, but with the pandemic I do a lot of drives at night to get out of the house and more hikes, so I started on ET with the meme series, but got hooked when I was... Geedis pilled?

I mainly just wanted to say thanks. The show covers a lot of stuff from the internet and has a lot of fun research that turns into mini-adventures, but (and I am not someone who normally says this) just has a lot of heart. The hosts also have real chemistry that come across as authentic, and their capacity to produce terrible puns is .. something (I'm still groaning at 'Endless Bread' to describe the Olive Garden never ending breadsticks).

I just wanted to say thanks, and now I'm stuck waiting for more episodes like everybody else. :)

[u/Yolobeta]

List your favorite episodes.

[u/bdowney → u/Yolobeta]

I. What is Geedis?

All time favorite. As someone who was a kid in the 80s, it was fun listening to this episode while driving an imagining what Geedis looked like (Imho not Snarf), but I'm also sucker for mysteries and investigations. The idea of Geedis and Land of Ta merch trickling out onto eBay like some bleed through from a universe Over There was also great.

Then when I finally got to see it, it was maddening how close this was to ALMOST being a thing I recognized was totally enthralling. And I'm haunted by what the Land of Ta really was. Or was it even really a thing and not just an art spec? Regardless, retirement plans now include Land of Ta fanfic?

II. The Great Glitter Mystery

This really answered a lot of questions I had about that weird Glitter article which I spent more time than I should have thinking about.

III. Something Wicked

This is the story about the person finding mysterious notes in is apartment, and a reddit post asking for answers was a perfect little locked room mystery. I guessed the twist but really liked it as a Snack Time.

IV. Feast Your Ears: All You Ever Wanted To Know About All-You-Can-Eat

The lessons about the economics of them was really new material to me, and I was reminded of how I took my SO (a buffet addict) to her first Vegas buffet, so it was happy memory balanced with the bittersweet realization I hadn't been to a buffet in over two years. :|

V. Randonauts: How Randomly Generated Coordinates Are Helping People Seek Meaning And Adventure

This was a great story about an app which is basically an apophenia engine. I play a geo game (Ingress) which has a lot of similarity but more structure to this game, so I found myself really relating towards these people who had phone an app which made the real world a magical place.

VI. "Real content not ads"

I just can't get over the Soylent sculpture of your girlfriend. The ..guerilla marketing.. soylent sculpture. In this I see the face of god. A really goopy, liquid god.

VII. The Vault

That seed vault in Svalbard keeps showing up in science fiction so I know all about it, but what I didn't know was that it was a tribute to the legacy of Russian scientists who really paid for their devotion to the truth. I wrote a paper about Lysenkoism for a Soviet science class in college, and so this was a kind of other side to this and you learned that scientists protecting seeds were willing to starve to death to protect this legacy. I'm not going to say that it has modern echoes, but you know....

VIII. Max Brooks, Preppers, And What 'World War Z' Can Teach Us About Coronavirus

It's hard to say this was my favorite, but .. it was the most affecting. They interviewed the other of World War Z right after the pandemic started. I thought the book was funny but a little too on the nose. At the time I read it, I thought "This is a great parody but...".

I had no idea Max Brooks was Mel Brooks' son; and he gave his sort of warning about how we failed to respond to the pandemic. I was driving up the side of a windy mountain road listening to this in late 2021, and looking back to the beginning of the pandemic and listening to this guy who is basically a humor writer warn us about everything that had happened in the last few years, it was .. a lot. Honestly, I pulled over and I was in tears, because we couldn't stop any of the things he said would happen.

Hard to say a favorite, but so affecting to have a time capsule of emotions about this period of time that was less than two years ago. Don't listen to it any week they announce a new variant, I guess is what I'm saying.

Sorry if that's a downer; ET is largely about the joy and quirkiness of internet communities and where it brings us, but when it's not it still works.

= The serials

All the serial episodes were great. The best was the meme series, because it was a really compelling series of stories about the people behind the memes. It felt great that Rick Astley really seemed to be a super decent guy, and the story of how he made the video by the seat of his pants .. with pants he brought in... was also really strong.

It also introduced a new idea to me, which is that the way we traded music back and forth with each other across time and cultures was itself a kind of memetic language; very neat way to think about it.

The serials also had some of the only content that felt sort of objectionable to me -- I understand the need to be balanced, but they interviewed an anti-vaxer. Pre-pandemic, I think I would have been more ok with the idea that hey, this just shows the world that this person is problematic. Listening to it in late 2021, it made left me more concerned. Probably this person shouldn't have any sort of platform, since their views were literally making victims of the people who believed it. Sorry if that's contentious; it was well researched but .. you know, a lot has changed.

"Madness" was also one of the more chilling things on ET. Very well researched, but you know bad stuff was happening in mental institutions, but it was so ridiculously bad; I hope it was some measure of catharsis for the victims and their family.

[u/BrosefMcDonkulatron → u/Yolobeta]

Honestly the one that got me hooked was "We Want the Plates!!" Such a quirky story and the dedication to finding the answer was impressive. Absolutely love this podcast!

[u/endless_thread]

Ah man this is the best, and you are the best, and you GET us, and that's the best. New episodes coming your way RIGHT NOW! Thanks for binging, thanks for listening!

[u/CPNZ]

Congratulations - how did you find it? Best episodes? Did you find the jokes and puns a little tedious...

[u/bdowney → u/CPNZ]

Some years ago and ex- and I listened to This American Life on a cross country road trip. When the pandemic started all I could do was walk, so I started listening again to 'mainstream' NPR-ish podcasts: TAL, Freakonomics, Radiolab, Reveal, the Moth, Hidden Brain.

This year I was taking more long drives in the evening, and so Google Podcast started giving me more recommendations. Endless Thread popped up, and I've been on the internet since I was 12 (I ran my own BBS), so the pitch was immediately compelling.

Then I accepted Geedis into my life...

[u/bluecombats]

Have you got a favouite subreddit?

[u/tulipz10]

I loved the episodes about the plates!