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Endless Thread

Endless Thread

By: WBUR
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About this listen

Hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson dig into the internet's vast and curious ecosystem of online communities to find untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL.Copyright Trustees of Boston University
Episodes
  • The drone web: how consumer drones have covered Ukraine's battle lines with fiber optic cable
    Dec 12 2025

    There's a lot of drone warfare footage on the internet from Ukraine and Russia. But over the last year, a surprising change has emerged, via photos from the battlefront posted online. It has become clear that a huge part of the drone war, from dropping grenades on soldiers in bunkers, to dropping explosives on infrastructure or airfields, is wired. Those wires are fiber optic cable, stretching from drone operators to the drones, which spool out cable across the ground and over trees along the battlefront. These drones are often single-use rarely returning from the mission they set out on. And the spools of fiber optic cable, stretching over 30-50 kilometers, don't get cleaned up. We explore this evolution of drone use in the conflict - where it came from, and why.

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    39 mins
  • What's on the menu: Ruby Tandoh on how the internet and algorithms shape our appetites
    Dec 5 2025

    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.)

    Show notes:

    All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now

    Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter and hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson. It was edited by Meg Cramer. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

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    29 mins
  • Episodes we love: Sandwiches of History
    Nov 28 2025

    In honor of the day-after-Thanksgiving leftover sandwich, we're revisiting our conversation with Barry Enderwick, the man behind the beloved and wildly popular "Sandwiches of History" social media accounts.

    Barry joined Ben and Amory to make a triple-decker sandwich from 1958, and to talk about his first cookbook, "Sandwiches of History the Cookbook: All the Best (and Most Surprising) Things People Have Put Between Slices of Bread."

    To quote Barry's signature phrase, we think you should give this episode "a GO!" If you're hungry for more, check out Sandwiches of History on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit.

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    36 mins
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