Tales of the Tailed: Three stories about our furry friends

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...

The internet's fight over dinosaur emoji

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...

Encore: The Max Headroom Incident — Revisiting The Masked Mystery

On November 22nd, 1987, two TV stations in Chicago had their broadcast signals hijacked by someone wearing a Max Headroom mask. In the years since, Redditors have played an integral...

Encore: Today You, Tomorrow Me — Why A Decade-Old Reddit Comment Still Resonates Today

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...

Encore: Three Autistic Redditors on Autism

Three autistic Redditors talk to us about their view of the world, their view of autism, and their hopes for greater representation in society.

MEMES, Bonus: Meme Chorus Meets NPR Twitter Spaces

MEMES, Part 11: I've heard this before

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...

MEMES, Bonus: Overly attached girlfriend

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....

MEMES, Part 10: Makmende

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.”...

MEMES, Bonus: The yearbook photo

For being the internet's poster boy for bad luck, Kyle Craven thinks he sure got lucky.

MEMES, Part 9: I'm not done yet

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...

MEMES, Part 8: The scream

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...

MEMES, Part 7: Dead giveaway

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...

MEMES, Bonus: Slender Man

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...

MEMES, Part 6: Call me... The Punisher

The Punisher has always been a complicated Marvel antihero: a man whose creator imagined him as a reaction to the failures of government at home and in the Vietnam War....

MEMES, Part 5: Big Man Tyrone

When Gordon Hurd fled Cameroon for the UK, he faced racism as he tried to support his family. He started his own video-making business and adopted another name: Big Man...

MEMES, Bonus: Zoë 'Disaster Girl' Roth

Zoë Roth was 4 years old when her dad took a photo of her smiling mischievously in front of a burning house. That photo would later spread like wildfire as...

MEMES, Part 4: Woman yelling at a cat

The funny "Woman Yelling at a Cat" meme that made “Real Housewife” Taylor Armstrong internet famous in 2019 has bitter roots. In this episode, we tell a little-known origin story...

MEMES, Bonus: A billion Ricks

Last week, we explored the origin of the “Rick Roll,” a meme that evolved from Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Since the music video resurfaced in 2007, the...

MEMES, Part 3: Gotta make you understand

Usually, nobody gets credit for starting a meme. But in the case of one of the most famous bait-and-switch memes of all time, the Rick Roll, we may be looking...