HarbingerOfTomb

Have you ever been deepfaked? Or maybe this is just a new fear – that photos of you end up online that are you – but not really you? What would you do? For an increasing number of people – especially women – this is becoming a reality.

So much so that a recent bill in Congress called the “Take It Down” Act has found some incredibly rare bipartisan support. The bill is sponsored by republican Senator Ted Cruz and democrat Senator Amy Klobuchar, making it illegal to post explicit deepfakes. First Lady Melania Trump has also been a vocal supporter. But the thing is, it isn't law yet and...it might not be enough.

A new podcast called Levittown, from Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope Podcasts, takes listeners on a sort of cyber thriller for the AI age. It's the story of a bunch of young women in the suburbs of Long Island who find naked fakes of themselves online and when told there’s nothing they can do about it – set out to catch the perpetrator. This ends up connecting them to a web of online vigilantes – and cyber criminals taking advantage of a justice system not ready for the reality of AI.

Endless Thread brings you the first episode in this series. If you like what you hear – find Levittown wherever you like to get your podcasts to listen to the full series.

Credits:

Episode producer: Dean Russell, Ben Brock Johnson

Editor: Meg Cramer

Co-hosts: Ben Brock Johnson, Amory Sivertson,

Show producers: Samata Joshi, Grace Tatter, Frannie Monahan, Emily Jankowski

Mixer and sound designer: Paul Vaitkus

In April of 2024, a group of aid workers were killed by Israeli Defense Forces while bringing food to Central Gaza. The IDF had alleged that its military analysts had identified a gunman on top of one of the trucks carrying supplies, suggesting it was a military vehicle, not an aid vehicle.

In the online debate following the event, a familiar trope popped up: arguing over whether one of the aid trucks a Toyota Hilux. The reason? In military conflict around the globe, the Hilux is a familiar character. Whether you're a U.S. designated terrorist group, a "freedom fighter," or someone else involved in direct armed conflict, you probably know about the Hilux.

Endless Thread wanted to know why, and how, this happened. So we took a journey beyond America's commercial pickup truck identity to understand why beyond our borders, the Hilux is the truck of choice.

Credits:

Episode producer: Katelyn Harrop and Frannie Monahan

Co-hosts: Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson

Show producers: Samata Joshi, Dean Russell, Emily Jankowski

Editor: Meg Cramer

Mixer and sound designer: Paul Vaitkus

Well, the messaging app Signal has been in the news recently, thanks to a snafu in which prominent federal defense officials mistakenly added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a group chat in which they discussed military strikes in Yemen.

This whole situation reminds us of another conversation we've been having as a team about how to responsibly leak information to the press, and if there is such a thing as a "secure line."

To answer this question, we reached out to our WBUR colleague, investigative and data reporter Todd Wallack.

If you have a story you would like to share with us in a secure way, you can reach us on Signal (yes, Signal) at 646-456-9095 or email us at [email protected]

There are moments that define each of our lives. Some we can predict: graduations, marriages, births, death. Others? Not so much.

And in the year 2025, sometimes, if the stars align just so, you may find that moment explode online.

That's what happened to 23-year-old Adrián Simancas. Last month, he was paddling the Straight of Magellan, with his father Dell, when the unimaginable happened: a humpback whale emerged from the water and engulfed him in its open mouth — and his father captured it all on video. Almost immediately, the video went viral.

Simancas sat down with Endless Thread to discuss his whale tale, the deluge of attention that followed, and what he's learned from his intimate moment with nature.

There are moments that define each of our lives. Some we can predict: graduations, marriages, births, death. Others? Not so much.

And in the year 2025, sometimes, if the stars align just so, you may find that moment explode online.

That's what happened to 23-year-old Adrián Simancas. Last month, he was paddling the Straight of Magellan, with his father Dell, when the unimaginable happened: a humpback whale emerged from the water and engulfed him in its open mouth — and his father captured it all on video. Almost immediately, the video went viral.

Simancas sat down with Endless Thread to discuss his whale tale, the deluge of attention that followed, and what he's learned from his intimate moment with nature.

Credits:

Episode producer: Grace Tatter and Amory Sivertson

Co-hosts: Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson

Show producers: Samata Joshi, Dean Russell, Katelyn Harrop, Frannie Monahan, Emily Jankowski

Mixer and sound designer: Paul Vaitkus

Last week, we introduced you to the wildly popular, albeit controversial, streamer and self-declared socialist Hasan Piker — what he’s all about, how he’s delivering his message to millions of followers, and who he’s reaching and resonating with.

When we talked to him in November, Hasan had a lot to say about the Democratic Party, about the streaming platform Twitch, and about what’s further dividing Americans right now. So here's more of our conversation with him.

Credits:

Episode producer: Grace Tatter

Co-hosts: Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson

Show producers: Samata Joshi, Dean Russell, Katelyn Harrop, Frannie Monahan, Paul Vaitkus

Mixer and sound designer: Emily Jankowski

Every day, seven days a week, for eight hours or more, Hasan Piker is live on the video game streaming platform, Twitch. This is where he shares his political commentary with a dedicated community of viewers — many of whom fall into a particularly sought-after electoral demographic: young men.

One of the dominant theories about the re-election of President Donald Trump in November 2024 was that it was aided by commentators like Piker: brash and bro-y. But Piker is a Socialist, considerably to the left of the mainstream Democratic Party. He gets into streamer beefs, but he also talks a lot about empathy and bringing a spirit of charitability to political discourse. What kind of effect does he have on his community and their political activism? Who's tuning in 50 hours a week to get their news from one guy (spoiler: it's not just twentysomething men), and really — who's that guy?

Endless Thread talks to Hasan Piker and his fans.

Credits:

Episode producer: Grace Tatter

Co-hosts: Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson

Show producers: Samata Joshi, Dean Russell, Katelyn Harrop, Frannie Monahan, Paul Vaitkus

Mixer and sound designer: Emily Jankowski

"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's since built an audience of hundreds of thousands of people who are rooting for, and laughing with, her. Sometimes it gets weird. Brooke talks to Endless Thread hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson about how facing death changed her relationship with social media and online community.

Credits:

Episode producer: Amory Sivertson

Co-hosts: Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson

Show producers: Samata Joshi, Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, Paul Vaitkus

Mixer and sound designer: Emily Jankowski

In the early 1990s, Don Buckley was a marketing executive for Warner Brothers by day, and by night? An explorer. "It was just curiosity and the drive towards discovery," Don says.

The source of Don's, and many others' curiosity at this time, was the burgeoning — but not yet mainstream — Internet. "This is a way to communicate with people that we haven't seen before," Don marveled. He started connecting the dots between his evening online exploration and his day job. In 1994, he converted the marketing materials for Warner Brothers' scandal-thriller film "Disclosure" into an interactive digital product. What Don had just built was one of the first movie websites. He showed it to the film's director who responded with, "What the f*** is this?," Don says. "He couldn't care less."

But Don Buckley was onto something. He kept building movie websites and, soon, hired himself a team: senior producer Dara Kubovy-Weiss (then Dara-Lynn Weiss), designer Jen Braun, coder and copywriter Michael Tritter, and design intern Andrew Stachler. They made sites for the movies "Twister," "Mars Attacks," "Eraser," "Joe's Apartment," among others. The approach for all of them, Don says, was to build a "narrative extension of the story being told in the film."

In 1996, that team had an especially big movie to market starring the Looney Tunes and NBA legend Michael Jordan: "Space Jam." What differentiates this site from the rest is something so unlikely that it sparked a viral moment of collective glee among nostalgic "Space Jam" fans and web nerds alike: this 29-year-old website is still up. Not only that, but the site still looks and functions today exactly as it did in 1996.

At the bottom of the website's "Site Map" is a simple yellow star icon with the caption, "Never on the Internet have so few worked so hard to bring you so much in so little time." Endless Thread needed to more. In this episode, Amory and Ben have a hilarious and gloriously chaotic conversation with the five people that brought us the surprisingly-enduring "Space Jam" website.

We’re coming to you with a special offering today. It’s an episode about the internet… from our friends just a few cubicles over here at WBUR: On Point.

Hosted by Meghna Chakrabarti, On Point is a unique, curiosity-driven combination of original reporting, newsmaker interviews, first-person stories, and in-depth analysis, making the world more intelligible and humane. When the world is more complicated than ever, we aim to make sense of it together.

We loved their recent episode about one of our favorite pieces of how the internet gets recorded and remembered — and we thought you might love it too.

So kick back and take a listen. We’ll bring you the usual shenanigans next week.

More than 900 billion web pages are preserved on The Wayback Machine, a history of humanity online. Now, copyright lawsuits could wipe it out. Guests

Brewster Kahle, founder and director of the Internet Archive. Digital librarian and computer engineer. James Grimmelmann, professor of digital and information law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School. Studies how laws regulating software affect freedom, wealth, and power.

Would it be possible to either: A. have a setting that will auto set the time for the next scheduled post, e.g. a certain number of hours after the last one scheduled or B. Have preset buttons on the date/time section to set your date and time such as - After Last Post: +1 hour, +4 hour,+6 hours, +12 hours, +24 hours, etc

It would be nice to be able to import and export community subscriptions so as to more easily move between accounts.