Finding joy in unexpected sounds and shapes

Have you ever heard an odd sound that sounds oddly musical? A spatula that rings like a toy piano? A storage container with a satisfying pop?

Endless Thread's Ben Brock Johnson brings co-host Amory Sivertson to the subreddit r/SoundsLikeMusic, where strange sounds are turned into music. He then turns to r/whatismycookiecutter, a subreddit of bewildering yet delightful shapes.

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Show notes

This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Ben Brock Johnson: Amory, have you completed the assignment that I gave you 10 minutes ago?

Amory Sivertson: I have.

Ben: Which is to bring a thing from life that makes a sound that, to you, is musical.

Amory: Oh, to me, is musical? I thought it was just satisfying.

Ben: OK, I'll take that. That's fine. Yeah. What do you got?

(Amory makes a sound.)

Ben: Ooh, that is nice. What is that?

Amory: I'll do it again.

(Amory makes a sound.)

Ben: Wow, that's really good. That's just really good.

Amory: Yeah.

Ben: It's rubber, for sure. There's rubber involved.

Amory: Rubber is involved. Yep. Do you want me to tell you?

Ben: Yeah.

Amory: This is a vacuum seal coffee canister — or I use it to store my coffee beans. So you push the lid down, and then it seals it, and then when you pull it up...

(Amory makes a sound.)

Ben: That's beautiful. All right. You ready for mine?

(Ben makes a sound.)

Amory: Huh.

Ben: You want a hint?

Amory: Yeah.

Ben: It's got this morning's scrambled eggs on it.

Amory: Oh. It's just a good old pan in your house?

Ben: It's just a chef's spatula. And when my wife got me this for Christmas, I gratefully accepted it, but I was like, OK, we have like four spatulas. But it is the greatest spatula. Now, I will never use another spatula. And one of the things about it that I love so much is...

(Ben makes a sound.)

Ben: ...you can just bang it on stuff while you're cooking.

Amory: Does it look like a fish spatula? Like one of those long boys, or is it? It's a little flippy?

Ben: It's a flat happy.

Amory: A flat happy.

Ben: It's a flat and happy.

Amory: Wow, I'm really, I'm glad you have that in your life now.

Ben: Thanks, man. Me too. You wanna start a band?

Amory: Yeah, ready? Three, two, one...

(Amory and Ben make sounds together.)

Ben: That's pretty good. I'll take it.

Amory: OK.

Ben: Alright, well, we've done a great job, but we are not nearly the best at this. And that is because I have discovered my new favorite subreddit. This is going to be a classic Endless Thread snacky episode. It's just going to be subreddit love from top to bottom, baby. You ready?

Alright, r/SoundsLikeMusic. It's a new favorite. The first video I want to play you is best defined by the first comment on the video in the subreddit, which is to say, "f****** classic." So, this is not a brand-new video. It is a repost, and in truth, a lot of this subreddit's posts are reposts from other subs. But this one, it really is a classic. It takes a girl bumping into a table or a bedpost or some piece of furniture, and the fast and short sound she makes gets turned into a single note in many performances.

Amory: OK.

Ben: Are you ready?

Amory: I'm ready.

[Reddit video of a woman yelling, and then remixed into songs.]

(Amory laughs.)

Amory: OK, so the original sound is just the "Ah!"

Ben: Yeah.

Amory: ...of her hitting her back.

Ben: Keep going, keep going.

Amory: OK.

[Reddit video of a woman yelling, and then remixed into songs.]

Ben: It's pretty good, right?

Amory: Very good. This is way up my alley.

Ben: That's what I thought. I thought it would be. As soon as I saw this subreddit, I was like, Amory must know about this. Like she has to be involved in this.

Amory: Oh, man.

Ben: So.

Amory: Before I was really on social media or browsing the web in this way, I used to just say to my husband before bed, "Read me funny tweets. Show me something funny on the internet." And I feel like he'd pull up stuff like this, or he knows that this is the kind of content that I need at the end of the day.

Ben: This is right in your wheelhouse. All right. So here's another one, which comes, I think, from the well-established genre of just guys being dudes who are probably a little stoned and playing ping pong. You ready for this one?

[Reddit video of a ping pong ball bouncing to the tune of Super Mario Bros.]

(Ben and Amory sing the Super Mario Bros. theme song.)

Amory: That is good, yeah.

Ben: That's pretty good, right? It's not bad. Not bad, just guys being dudes. Here is another popular genre of crossposts on the sub, which is basically machines making crazy sounds or tool gifs. And this is a mashup, so this was a popular video or set of videos that has now been edited.

[Reddit video of machine noise remixed into music.]

Amory: OK. Whoa. OK. There's a machine that's spitting out...

Ben: ...Hot rods.

Amory: ...hot rods, and now it's like — ah! It's happening so fast. There are turning machines. Everything's very hot. This is very stressful to watch. There are cranks and blow torches and—

Ben: But what I like is the interspersed, edited-in, dorky techno guy.

Amory: Dancing to the machines...

Ben: That loves it.

Amory: ...making these pieces of metal do whatever is happening there.

Ben: All right. So, Amory, I think you know, what's important here is that as a journalist I am looking for trends; I'm looking for patterns; I'm looking for the bigger picture in this musical non-music-things subreddit. And my deep, deep investigation has discovered that this sub has two particular musical themes.

Amory: OK.

Ben: One is a song by Usher, demonstrated by this woman — and her apparently suffering teenage daughter — who discovers something while opening an oven door.

[Reddit video of an oven door squeaking to the tune of Usher's "Yeah!"]

Ben: This is pretty good, right? It's pretty good.

Amory: That's excellent.

Ben: And I'll give you a second. I'll give you the pattern here. Here's the proof that it's a pattern.

[Reddit video of a drawer squeaking to the tune of Usher's "Yeah!"]

Amory: OK. It's a drawer closing.

Ben: I mean, it's not perfect. It's not great, but it's solid. Right?

Amory: It is definitely solid. I find so much joy in the fact that I feel like this is the stuff that I do at home.

Ben: Yes.

Amory: This sub has more than 150,000 members. And that's just the people who know about it and are on Reddit and the fact that we're all in our homes...

Ben: Doing this stuff.

Amory: ...appreciating the music of life. It just makes me happy.

Ben: So I got another pattern for you. Are you a Fast and Furious fan?

Amory: No.

Ben: Are you too fast, too furious?

Amory: I'm too fast and too furious for that.

Ben: Alright, well, have you ever seen Tokyo Drift? I guess not then, right?

Amory: Nope.

Ben: So Tokyo Drift is the other pattern here.

[Reddit video of an Allen wrench playing "Tokyo Drift" by the Teriyaki Boyz.]

Amory: So it's a guy using a little multitool or an Allen wrench — is that what it's called?

Ben: Yeah, it's an Allen wrench.

Amory: To hit drill bits. That's good.

Ben: And do you know that song? Because I didn't know the song. I just kept seeing these posts on the sub that just said "Tokyo Drift." And I was like, what is happening?

Amory: It sounds familiar, but I don't.

Ben: Here's the original if you want to listen to that.

[“Tokyo Drift” by the Teriyaki Boyz]

Ben: Here's another one with wrenches.

[Reddit video of a wrench playing "Tokyo Drift" by the Teriyaki Boyz.]

Ben: And I just love the joy that this is creating in the world. And we need a lot of joy right now, so here's some joy.

Amory: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that.

Ben: Alright, I got one more for you, but not until after this message.

[MIDROLL]

Ben: OK, so Amory, I have one more shorty subreddit to talk to you about.

Amory: OK.

Ben: I just kind of love it. I don't know why; it's just like one of those communities that springs up, and you just have to love the specificity of it and, at the same time, the universal relatability of it, which I think is similar to what you were saying about "Sounds Like Music," right? It's a thing that you're like, Oh my god, I do this all the time! But I didn't know that there were 225,000 people on Reddit also doing this.

Amory: Well, it's 150,000, but—

Ben: No, this one is 225,000 people.

Amory: Oh, OK. OK. Yes.

Ben: Do you make cookies? I know you make cookies because I've eaten your cookies.

Amory: I do make cookies occasionally.

Ben: Do you have any cookie cutters that have been handed down to you?

Amory: I have an apple-shaped one and a Christmas tree-shaped one, and I've never used either.

(Ben laughs.)

Amory: I don't make those kinds of cookies.

Ben: Wow, what a simple yet somehow insulting statement. I don't make those kind of cookies.

Amory: I make blobs.

Ben: Alright, well, take a look at this subreddit. It is r/whatismycookiecutter.

Amory: Wow. "Reddit's cozy nook for finding what your cookie cutter might be."

Ben: And it is incredible how frequently people are absolutely confused by their cookie cutters.

Amory: Oh my god, what is that? It looks like a maple leaf combined — like if a maple leaf and a cowboy boot had a baby. And it's got some Yoda ears to it, too, in the middle. So it's like if baby Yoda and a maple leaf and a cowboy boot got together. OK, the next one I see, that's a saw. I mean, that's not a great shape for a cookie, but that's a saw.

Ben: Yep, yep.

Amory: Oh my god, this is a wild one. It looks like a vacuum cleaner.

Ben: You're talking about the one that's got a bloop on the top and a little arm on the side? So now look in the comments. Look in the comments.

Amory: OK

Ben: Look at the top comment.

Amory: The top comment. Whoa, I mean, it's not just a rotary phone. It's like an antique phone that has the little earpiece. Oh god, what? I mean, maybe, but.

Ben: I just find this subreddit amazing because it inspires people's creativity in the top comment where it's like people will bring out a cookie cutter, and they'll be like, I don't know what this is. Do you know what this is? And then people in the comments — either they will immediately identify what seems very likely for the cookie cutter to be, or they will make something up that is hilarious and better than probably what the original thing was.

Amory: It also just goes to show the outlines of things are not always very clear. Yeah, like, like you're leaving a lot of work to the cookie decorator in this case.

Ben: You really are!

Amory: You know, you've got to be a good decorator. Like this one, it looks like it could be — I mean, actually, you could interpret it many ways. So there's one that's pretty generic, but it kind of looks like either an ice cream cone with ice cream on top, or honestly, the first thing that I thought was it's a gnome. And so what would be the ice cream flipped upside down is now like a gnome beard with a hat on top. But, then, you'd have this nice little multi-use cookie cutter for either summer cookies for ice cream or winter cookies for gnomes. Or I guess a garden gnome is a year-round, uh, treasure.

Ben: It's a year-round treasure. If you leave your garden gnome out in the snow. Yeah, yeah. Well, so, you know.

Amory: I mean, that looks like a uterus and ovaries, this next one that I'm seeing.

Ben: It's a little strange to eat an ovary cookie, but at the same time, I love the recognition of female reproductive organs in popular culture, which are often far outnumbered by male organs, I feel.

All right, that's all I had for you. A couple subreddits that I just think we all, when we need some joy, these are some good spots to go.

Amory: Oh boy, need that joy.

Ben: Oh boy, I need that joy, so make yourself some cookies.

Amory: Yeah, but they can be blobs, you know.

Ben: All right, folks.

Amory: Go make some cookies and some music.

Ben: Talk to you next week.

Amory: Bye.