Encore: Owl pursuits

In 2024, Bridget Todd was facing down the hardest chapter of her life. Her father was rushed to the ICU after having a stroke. Then, a few days later, Bridget's mom died without warning. Suddenly, Bridget found herself grieving, and trying to navigate the labyrinthian American healthcare system as her dad's primary caretaker, all while living hours away from her closest friends. Feeling isolated and overwhelmed, she turned to ChatGPT, and ended up telling it everything. Bridget is a tech critic and journalist, and the host of the podcast "There Are No Girls on the Internet." She's also the co-author of the audiobook Love at First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy. After interrogating her own relationship with a chatbot, Bridget investigated the trend of AI companionship more broadly. She learned the true stories behind click-bait headlines about AI fiancés and reconsidered her own bot rapport. Ben and Amory talk to Bridget about what we have to lose when we outsource our emotions to LLMs, and if there's anything to gain. Show notes: Love at First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy, by Bridget Todd and Michael Amato (Simon & Schuster) AI users form relationships with technology (CBS News) Robot hosts, real relationships: How AI is changing human connection (Endless Thread) Bridget's podcast, There are No Girls on the Internet This episode was produced by Amory Sivertson and Grace Tatter. It was co-hosted by Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson, and edited by Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

Every year, the Endless Thread team convenes around a campfire to freak each other out with the scariest stories they can find on the web. This Halloweekend, Ben Brock Johnson, Amory Sivertson, and producer Frannie Monahan present tales of strange canine-like creatures, mysterious Appalachian sandwiches, and legal-minded ghosts. Show notes: "What is the scariest thing you’ve ever seen in your life that you can’t explain?" (r/AskReddit) @ChurchofChelsea's story (TikTok) "The Only Case in American History Where a "Ghost" Solved a Murder" (r/GhostStories) The Greenbrier Ghost is an odd West Virginia tale (MetroNews) Greenbrier Ghost, Zona Heaster Shue (Greenbrier Valley) The Greenbrier Ghost (Appalachian History) Everlasting Faint (Madison Opera) This episode was produced by Grace Tatter, Frannie Monahan, Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson, and co-hosted by Frannie, Amory and Ben. It was edited by Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

Lagoa Misteriosa, or Mysterious Lagoon, is located near the small Brazilian city of Jardim. Surrounded by lush jungle, the surface of the lagoon looks like azurite — still as glass and crystalline. Its waters are so clear, looking down you might expect to see the bottom, except... the bottom of Lagoa Misteriosa has never been found. Today on Endless Dread, our annual witch's hat tip to spooky season, Amory takes Ben deep down into the story, and mystery, of Lagoa Misteriosa. The story for Amory began on Reddit in r/thalassophia, a community devoted to the fear of deep water. Show notes: The bottom of this lake has never been found (Reddit) Lagoa Misteriosa Footage of Misteriosa (Lagoa Misteriosa on Instagram) Divers Have Descended More Than 220 Meters Into This Brazilian Lagoon — And Still Haven’t Found The Bottom (Daily Dot) Dave Not Coming Back | FULL DOCUMENTARY (YouTube) This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Up to a billion people use ChatGPT every week, for everything from the mundane to the weird to the deeply personal. It is commonly assumed that these messages are private – between the user and the LLM. It is commonly assumed that these messages are private – between the user and the LLM. But in some cases, human reviewers are reading these conversations and offering editorial feedback to help ChatGPT sound more human. Reporter Joseph Cox of 404 Media broke the story of Project Lily, Open AI's initiative to use human reviewers to train and improve ChatGPT. He breaks it down for us on this week's Endless Thread. Show notes: Inside ‘Project Lily’: The Humans Reading Your ChatGPT Chats (404 Media) This episode was produced by Grace Tatter and Frannie Monahan. It was co-hosted by Grace Tatter, Ben Brock Johnson, and Amory Sivertson, and edited by Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

"Should I be joking at a time like this?" That's the question then 33-year-old Brooke Eby asked herself when she uploaded her first piece of TikTok comedy in 2022, about being diagnosed with a terminal illness. Brooke built an audience of hundreds of thousands of people who were rooting for, and laughing with, her. Sometimes it got weird. Brooke died due to complications with ALS earlier this month. She was 37. In 2025, she talked to Endless Thread hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson about how facing death changed her relationship with social media and online community. Show notes: Brooke Eby's TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube ALSTogether When Your Terminal Illness Makes You a TikTok Star (The New York Times) This episoded was written and produced by Grace Tatter. It was co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

The internet is the great connector. Talk with nearly anyone at any time about anything. But that kind of freedom can lead to misunderstandings. Maybe your neighbors discover your cruder, less friendly persona online. Maybe a debate over holiday lore becomes a battle front. Endless Thread producers Grace Tatter and Frannie Monahan bring two stories to remind us that the internet is a morass of information that no one can ever control. Show notes: "How I became the villain of El Cerrito’s Nextdoor" (Oakland Review of Books) Bomellida FAQ (GitHub) This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Get out your graphing calculators, because today's episode of Endless Thread is about a math problem. Specifically: wt(π1, . . . , πm) = m−1 ∑ i=1 wt(πi , πi+1) Now, pencils down. Stumped? So were mathematicians for decades. That is, until the equation was solved in a thread on 4Chan about watching the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.  Show notes: A lower bound on the length of the shortest superpattern (oeis.org) Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So: The Secret of Japanese Cooking Basics (Umami Insider) This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Mo lives in Aden, an ancient city in southern Yemen. Built on a volcanic crater, it has castles and beaches set against mountains. It's beautiful. Like the rest of the country, it is also in the midst of an ongoing civil war. This summer, protests broke out over living conditions and basic services in the city -- like electricity, which can be shut off for 18 hours at a time. But despite these conditions, for the last five years, Mo has been fighting for a persistent dream of his –– a video game internet cafe for his neighborhood. This week on Endless Thread Ben and Amory tell the story of how Mo, against all odds, has kept the lights on (quite literally) at his gaming cafe thanks to his persistence, and the help of internet strangers across the world. This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Ben can make a roaring, rumbling sound with his ears that no one else can hear. He never thought much about it — whether only he could do this, or whether everyone could do this — until he discovered a subreddit called Ear Rumblers Assemble: a whole community devoted to the mysterious and understudied ability to voluntarily tense one of the miniscule muscles in our ears.  We go into Ben's ear with Dr. Anand Devaiah, and raise questions about how everyone experiences the world differently and the enduring mysteries of the human body.   Show notes: r/earrumblersassemble (Reddit) Thanks to Reddit, a New Diagnosis Is Bubbling Up Across the Nation (KFF Health News) This episode was produced by Grace Tatter and edited by Dave Shaw. It was co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.  

This episode was originally published on March 10, 2023.  In 2022, freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill got a new neighbor: an owl. What wasn't clear was whether the owl was trying to befriend them, or catch them. Sometimes the owl seemed to be chasing students. Other times, it seemed to come in peace. A popular campus Instagram account reported that a woman had actually raised the owl herself. After she was spotted feeding it, the owl sightings stopped, much to the disappointment of students who'd come to consider it as a sort of mascot. Where had the owl come from, and where did it go? Endless Thread host Ben Brock Johnson and producer Grace Tatter talk about how the owl gained online campus fame, and get a surprise update from the person who knows the owl best. Show notes "Animal Instincts" (Criminal) "The Real Killer in The Staircase Might Be … an Owl?" (Vulture) "Column: Hinton hears a hoot — the Class of 2026 vs. the HoJo Owl" (The Daily Tar Heel) Instagram post of owl chasing student Kaleigh Wilhite (UNC Chicks) Instagram post of owl confrontation at a basketball court (UNC Chicks) Instagram post with other campus owl sightings (UNC Chicks) Instagram post of Barb with the owl (UNC Quirks) Reddit post on r/wellthatsucks about an owl attack "An owl twice attacked a Washington woman. A biologist says it's becoming more common" (NPR) This content was originally created for audio. An auto-generated transcript is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.