Amory, Ben, and producer Quincy Walters explore three stories, in which a man's furry best friend is shot by a police officer, a person accuses Reese Witherspoon of stealing her horse, and cats are... ethnically stereotyped?
Emoji might not be 66 million years old, but they are pretty much everywhere. Join Ben and Amory as they explore the history of dinosaur emoji in LGBTQ+ communities and the fight over the emoji's meaning online.
10 years ago, Justin found himself on the side of the road with a blown out tire. Hours went by and no one stopped to help. But just as he was about to give up, something happened that changed Justin forever.
Three autistic Redditors talk to us about their view of the world, their view of autism, and their hopes for greater representation in society.
In this episode, we cross-examine memes and their relevance, and look at a surprising hypothesis that draws a through-line from TikTok to much farther back in history––all the way to the very beginning of human culture. Ultimately, we investigate why memes are such an obsession right now, and whether we...
Laina Morris leaned in big-time when a video that began as a parody entry in a Justin Bieber fan contest turned into the epic meme Overly Attached Girlfriend in 2012. Laina continued making videos until 2019, when she stopped, in part due to depression and anxiety. We hear more about...
Western media told countless stories about Kenya's viral music video character known as “Makmende.” They called Makmende “Kenyan Chuck Norris,” or a sound-alike of his famous line, “Make my day.” But, according to the music artists, none of these characterizations are accurate. We explore American myopia, and the peril and...
For being the internet's poster boy for bad luck, Kyle Craven thinks he sure got lucky.
Anybody old enough to remember infomercials has probably seen the work of TV pitchman Billy Mays. But younger people still know his face and squeaky OxiClean personality. While Mays died years ago, he’s lived on in meme form. We ask his son Billy Mays III, his biggest frenemy, and others...
If you typed “inauguration” into your web browser around 2017, you likely saw an image of a person screaming "NOOOO!". That person was Jess, who didn’t know was that they were being filmed during Trump's inauguration. Within hours, this became the scream heard ‘round the world. Four years later, Jess...
In 2013, four white musicians turned a news clip featuring a Black man, Charles Ramsey, into a song. The meme erupted, but when Ramsey discovered it, he couldn’t tell if it was flattery or mockery. We examine The Gregory Brothers and the lives of Ramsey and other Black “unintentional singers”...
When two 12 year-old girls attacked their friend in the woods of Waukesha, Wisconsin in May of 2014, they claimed to have done it to please Slender Man -- a fictional monster created on an internet forum called "Something Awful." In this bonus episode of Endless Thread, we examine Slender...