Endless Thread - Breaking Bread or Breaking Ties?

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

Back in the day, we didn't have access to our weird uncle's every political thought. In the age of social media, though, we all too often do, making avoiding politics at family gatherings all the more difficult. Endless Thread listeners share their stories of familial strife, and how they plan to navigate an especially politically divisive holiday season with integrity, humor, and love. Credits: This episode was written by Ben Brock Johnson and produced by Grace Tatter. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. It was hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson. 

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Bonnie. Yeah, I said it like that because I hate her guts. I've since learned to lock my tweets. I really stopped engaging probably 15 years ago when it seemed like Facebook was getting really weird. He could have talked to me about it before deciding to just cut me out. I said, I don't hate you, but I don't see the 2020 election as politics. I see. as human right.

I feel like we can have differences of opinion in my family, but as long as they respect me as a person, I will show them the same respect. Bonnie. Ama. Benjo. Do you have a weird uncle

and will you tell us about him and whether or not you or your family fights with him on Facebook about politics? I cannot confirm or deny that I have a weird uncle. Well, you know what's interesting about my extended family is that there are many an uncle and some of those uncles think that others of those uncles are the weird uncles and the other uncles think the other uncles

are the weird uncles. You know what I'm saying? Oh, I know. Which is to say there is political division in my extended family. And so, depending upon... Amongst the uncles. And depending upon whose point of view you are more aligned with, you are bound to think the other side is the weird uncle. Yeah. What about you? So, sadly, most of my uncles have passed away. I think maybe in some ways I am the weird uncle, maybe not politically, because my family's pretty monochromatic in a two-party system. But I do my best to carry on Johnson traditions of weirdness.

Such as? I say that. Like, I don't know you as a person, but... I don't think I've ever awful waffled you, have I? Awful waffled? No. This is when I show up at your house before the sun comes up with all the ingredients for waffles, and then I make you waffles.

I force myself into your house, and then I make you waffles, and I wake you up with waffles. You and Mike? Nothing awful about that. That's what I would say, but it's kind of awful because, like, you're breaking and entering, and then you're... Oh, is you... I mean, I'm not going to put my elbow through a window, but I might ring your doorbell a bunch of times.

Anyway, that's the kind of weird uncle I am. I, you know, I do things like that, I feel like. Okay. Well, this isn't really the kind of weirdness that we're talking about this week. No, if only it was, yeah. We're talking about, in reaction to this election, how some pretty loud views posted on the internet are going to play out around the holiday table under the tree. Next to the menorah. Beneath the turkey leg.

The toferky leg in your house. Yeah. Yeah, because look, let's be real. It feels like this country is about to hit terminal velocity when it comes to our politics and maybe how those politics play out in presidencies. So, let's hear some real talk from you. I'm Amory Siebertson. I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and you're listening to Endless Thread.

We're coming to you from double. You B, you are Boston's family holiday dinner table. Today's episode, hey, pass the greens, Amory, would you pass the greens? Today's episode. Breaking bread or breaking ties. All right. So Amory, you came up with our approach for this episode. Why?

I didn't really have to come up with anything. I was just seeing this in real time. I was reminded that in an election year, emotions are high. tensions become more visible on social media. People want to voice their opinions. And they also take other people's political opinions kind of personally when it has to do with who is allowed to be in our country,

who is allowed access to health care, who is allowed this or that. So I was just witnessing some of those conversations play out between family members of mine on social media and remembered, oh, yeah, we're all going to be gathering here shortly. And what will that look like in real life? And we have now asked a bunch of listeners to send us voice memos or emails on this topic. And kudos to y'all for following the assignment.

Let us start with Piper. Emery, did you clock this listener, Piper coming in with some things to say? I did clock it. I haven't read it yet. So we're going to read it in real time, right? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, Piper says, I ruined Zoom Thanksgiving in 2020 because of a tweet. My cousin named her dog, Trump. And Piper tweeted what she thought about that decision by her cousin. My point was simply that Trump is a stupid name for a dog, regardless of politics. My family and I obviously disagree on Trump the candidate.

But hand to my heart, my critique was purely aesthetic. Sure, Piper. Sure it was. Purely. I would also mourn for a dog named Biden or Kamala or Sotomayor. It just doesn't have the jeunisequois I look for in a dog name. Tweeting this before the election caused the biggest political fight we've had in years. Hopefully this year I will learn to shut my mouth. Unlikely, though. Oh, Piper, please never learn to shut your mouth.

Because you are hilarious. Seriously. But also thoughtful. Producer Grace Tatter got Piper's digits, got her on the phone, got more of the story. I know that there are some family members where my respect for our familial ties kind of exceeds my willingness to change their mind or start something that's going to go downhill. All of my family is already in Michigan, so we're just staying together.

Usually it's just my nuclear family and our grandmother at Thanksgiving, and then we do kind of a leftovers thing with the rest of the family. So, yep, we'll probably be gathered the day after Thanksgiving. And does she think politics will come up? I hope not. Usually we go in with a couple, my mom and I will strategize and we'll have, like, okay, here's how we're going to get off the topic if it does arise. My dad just, he takes the bait.

I love him so much, but he does take the bait if someone brings up a disagreement. so we've got to have little distraction topics that we can bring up that are uncontroversial. Oh, a good old subject change. I like that. I connect with this because we've had, for family gatherings in the past, discussed whether or not politics was allowed to come up at the Thanksgiving dinner table. I don't know if that sounds like that's probably not an issue for you, Ben. And I don't even remember where we landed because I know someone suggested it and then someone else said,

No, we should be able to talk about these things. My family is in no topic as off-limits kind of family. And in fact, I think we kind of prefer extremely direct. We're not really a small-talk family. Also, we're not a family with any political named pets. We name our pets after, like, musical composers. But the instinct to just steer clear of politics is something we heard from another listener. A, he just asked us to go by one initial A.

At the same time, politics are also very personal for A. He is a trans man living in Utah. He grew up in a big Mormon family, and he wants to be able to talk about the issues that are important to him with the people who are important to him. One person in particular. My dad is my hero, and he's always struck me as a kind and very intelligent person. And for that reason, this election season has put me very at odds at him,

as well as the way that he raised me to be in value in other people, and I'm unsure how to reconcile it. I don't understand how he can be a loving father of four daughters plus me, a transgender man, and yet also called Donald Trump a courageous figure. For me, it's not really about Republican versus Democrat. Even if Trump had the exact same political views that I did and supported the kind of policies that I thought would be valuable for the country, I wouldn't be. be able to support him knowing the things that he's done and his lack of moral character. Certainly I wouldn't call him brave. To me, his actions are unconscionable and directly against the values that my dad taught me to raise. It feels like some kind of strange disconnect in his

mind that I don't know how to broach or even talk about with him without creating further polarization and pushing him further away. The past eight years have been really shocking here in Utah, seeing people that are my family members and people I work with and people just generally in the community support such a vile man in favor of supporting their political party. I wouldn't be able to look people in the eyes doing that myself. I want to talk to my dad about this and tell him my feelings about how the person that he's supporting seems against every other value that he seems to hold in his life. But I don't really know how. I don't want to lose my relationship with my dad. And so I have been unsure how to talk

with him about that. I will see my dad around the holidays. We live really nearby and I'd see him very regularly. So I don't imagine that changing. But I do want to talk to him. And so I'm trying to figure out how. Oh, that's so hard when you disagree with someone who is as close to you as a parent. And when you feel like the person that your parent supports basically denies a fundamental part of who you are. And I sometimes think about these kinds of differences, Ben, like when we hear A say that Donald Trump is a vile person, I try to think about someone who really supports Donald Trump thinking that Kamala Harris is a vile person. And you might not understand how they could say Kamala Harris is a vile person. And they might not understand how you could say Donald Trump is a vile person.

And we just literally think that the opposite thing is true. And so you feel a little insane because it's your cause. in a how could you possibly think this loop, no matter what side you're on? You know what I mean? No, this is fine. No, absolutely. I think I mean, that's the kind of weird moment that we're in, right?

Like it feels like people are living in at least two and maybe many different realities. Yeah, it's like the dress debate, the blue and black versus white and gold, except we're talking about fundamental beliefs here. Yeah, like it's like the dress but with racism and murder or something. Instead of saying that the dress is blue, you're saying you can't live here anymore,

go back to the country you fled to save your life and your family's life. Or we're saying you, we're not saying the dress is gold. We're saying you don't have access to health care. Yeah, and I think that this has been a debate of, such big issues with a capital I when also it's it's always going to also be an election about people and people that are dear to us and that we know and love and sometimes the larger issues feel like they become more important than the person that you've known your whole life and that's so sad okay we're going to come back to A and in the meantime

we're going to hear from Erica. Erica reposted an Instagram story about how Jewish people were indigenous to Jerusalem. She posted this on Christmas Day of last year just after she shared with her broader family that she was about to have a baby. About a month later, we have a family call on Zoom every month

because the parents, the sister and her husband, myself and my husband, live all in different cities. And I get on the family Zoom and hear from my sister-in-law that her husband will no longer be participating in the family calls because he was offended by this post on Instagram. I never heard from him about it and I let her know that I was available to talk about it if he wanted to. I guess I kind of felt like it wasn't fair that she was put in a place of having to deliver the news and certainly wouldn't be able to work out the issues as some sort of mediator when he wasn't participating even. So kind of just let it sit. I was shocked. It seems like he could have

talked to me about it before deciding to just cut me out. But it was like, without a word. And I want to say something, Amory, about this story because two things I think are worth stating. Number one, clearly this story is about the conflict between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. So that's like going on in the background here. Another thing I should say is that listening to this story, our producer Grace and I did come away with a lot of questions about the other side of this story. And I think that's true for every one. one we heard from. So just an acknowledgement that we're really hearing one side of the story from each of these people that we're hearing from. And some of them are, you know, thinking about that

other side and presenting that other side differently than others. And yeah, we should just think about that as we go through this. Yeah, that's a great, a great reminder. Erica said that this estrangement continued through the birth of her baby. Her sister-in-law's husband refused to come visit. around this time there was also a conversation in the family about who is casting votes for whom. The husband of Erica's sister-in-law couldn't vote because he isn't a citizen. He's from Turkey. But the sister-in-law had a take on this. And just a heads up, there's a lot of train sound in the background wherever Erica was recording this.

Here's what the sister-in-law said. She would not be voting for Kamala because of Kamala's support for Israel. or something about unless Kamala came out against Israel. And my mother-in-law was encouraging my sister-in-law to vote. And somehow this turned into the brother-in-law, the husband screaming at my mother-in-law and say to her, I'm a communist, you should know this about me. This division has continued. And according to Erica, it's resulted in the husband giving multiple members in the family the silent treatment.

And also encouraging his wife to do the same. To me, his behavior is just blatantly abusive. And it's really concerning the way he's, I think, trying to isolate her. by creating this division and not supporting her relationships with her family. Erica says that her sister-in-law still comes to regular family Zoom calls, even though the husband does not. And she feels good about that. She's written her sister letters about how she feels,

but she's not sure where all of this will lead. And it all comes from this apparent issue of politics on the other side of the world. when there's so much else happening and our relationship really doesn't, in my opinion, need to be about our opinions about politics. But it seems that for at least him, it runs deeper and it's hard for me to know, is it really about the politics? Or is it about control over his life or control over me in like a gendered sort of way. So thanks for asking. This was long and have a great night. As to whether or not Erica will see this portion of her family around the holidays this year, that is unclear. But maybe a good footnote if you believe like she might

that family connection should, ahem, Trump politics. When Erica's baby came into this world, her sister-in-law and her sister-in-law's parents did come to meet the little one. We're going to hear some more family T slash drama, so I'm involving a wizard right after this. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of what.

Whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from CitySpace Productions,

the creative studio from WBUR's Business Partnership. become a thought leader, recruit new talent, reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at wbUR.org slash creative studio. We are back with a family dispute about a wizard. Hi, so my story for the family tension and conversations about the online world, meeting our family world, comes back a couple of years ago. back when it just started coming out that JK Rowling had more turf-aligned ideology. I believe she identifies with that term now.

But at that time, me, a young queer person with a lot of trans folk in my personal life, it meant a lot. Turf as in trans-exclusionary radical feminist, as some people call them. And J.K. Rowling, who has become a pretty loud anti-trans rights person in the discourse. Sage called us because, number one, Harry Potter fans are extremely online, and number two, what better way to connect with a loved one than through the complexities of a totally fantasy world and the person who created it? Right? Right? Wrong. When I brought that conversation casually up to my mother, I was kind of shocked with how much she kind of dug in and refused to give me leeway with it, to allow me to express something

that matter to me, and then be sympathetic about it. In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense because that was the story that she fell in love with my father through. That's how she taught them to read, and it's kind of an important part of their history of my mom's identity. She's not like a huge Harry Potter nerd. She doesn't have tattoos or whatever, but it's still a cornerstone of her past to an extent. In fact, I still own the book that they used to make notes in.

There's highlights, little scribbles on the side. Sage says that basically they can't talk about the real stuff behind the books. And that is hard. But in order to be the kind of family that does still get together around the holidays, for instance, Sage has to let this ride for now. I realize what's more important is just preserving that relationship I have with my mother versus this ephemeral idea, especially in this internet world, of being right.

Thank you. Sage, a sage and a saint. Okay, so back from the fantasy world to the very real one. We got an email from Diana, who is not a listener, but is a Republican. Maybe she's a future listener? She was actually Googling family conflict, which is how she got to our show. And it sounds like recent weeks and the campaign before the election have been rough. Here's a little of Diana's email.

We've had the weirdest and worst family interactions during the election in the next day, and really still ongoing. My immediate family with husband and kids includes eight people. Three of the five are Democrats. Five are Republican. I'm the mom, Republican, and my husband and one of my sons, Democrats, and I have been engaging in a text thread with our whole family that has played out a lot of this terrible conversation. My husband told me that he could never look at me and my Republican kids the same way. My son basically told me that the way I raised him with integrity and good character was a lie

and that he doesn't really know me like he thought he did if I could vote for Trump. He even said he needed to take off his rose-colored glasses regarding me. We will continue to have issues in our family. Sounds like it. But my plan is to not ever talk about politics and keep the TV off anything that talks about Trump, which is very difficult.

I've never seen anything like this, especially not from my tight-knit family. It's heartbreaking. Woo. Okay, here's something that I really find fascinating and deeply connected to everything we're all going through, Amory. Mm-hmm. Because we're experiencing an internet-fueled version of something that really existed before the web, too. generations before the internet used to have a commonly uttered rule, no politics at the dinner table. And without making a judgment on whether that is a good rule or bad rule, it seems to be a rule in reaction to something.

Probably a reaction to fights. Big, messy, maybe ugly fights. And we're in this period right now where we're used to sharing so much of ourselves and our thoughts on social media that our political beliefs make their way. onto the platforms as well. And then we realize, oh, my God, now we all know how our relatives are feeling in this especially divided time. And so we're creating an internet version of this no politics at the dinner table now as a reaction. And we are, we're muting people. We're sometimes getting off of social media altogether.

Which is why we should get back to A, the trans man with a gaggle of sisters who sent us a voicemail about finding a way to still love his dad. Even though the candidate his dad supported in the election stands against A's right to exist as a person. A reminder that A's in a small town in Utah and that there are a number of people in A's family who might fall under the weird uncle moniker. He's feeling this trend of giving up on social media interaction, the digital version of this no politics at the dinner table. And he's part of this trend when we asked him about whether he was engaging in debate on social media ahead of the holidays, he said, I did when I was younger, like, you know, 18 or 19, because like back then I was like,

I could make a difference, you know, I'm going to change my uncle's mind on this Facebook post. Like, what ends up happening is I realize that we just kind of like talk at each other. We're not really making any meaningful connection, if that makes sense. Like, I'm not going to change anyone's mind on a Facebook post. then they're not going to change in my mind. If a political topic, if I don't agree with or want to discuss in greater depth with them comes up in person, then I will. But like at this point in my life, you know, it's been a decade of trying to respond to online posts and not really seeing a difference. I realize it just makes me angry and it doesn't do anything meaningful.

Another listener we heard from, Nate, felt similar to A. Nate's stayed away from familial internet politics discussion for a while. I purposefully wasn't on the same social media as my parents. Because I wasn't out to them and when I was on social media, I wanted to be somewhere I could be out. So stayed away from them. My cool aunt, she is also on Facebook and like sometimes she tells me the things she sees. That's from our follow-up call with Nate, who was coming into his own as a queer person almost a decade ago. this is from the first voice memo Nate sent us.

Politics isn't the sole reason I'm no longer in contact with the great many of my more conservative family members, but it is a contributing factor. In the years leading up to 2016, my mom's company laid off just about everyone in her department. Many of them people she'd been friends with for years. Left her with a much reduced role and shipped all that labor overseas. I believe she was depressed for years because of this. One of the way she handled this dilemma was by going to a Trump rally in 2016, probably believing in his rhetoric that he'd keep American jobs in America. Nate says he was horrified at what he felt was his family and most importantly his mom, moving towards a political platform that included a lot of hatred.

To me, politics wasn't an issue of how American companies should do business, but the morality of how queer people should be treated. I tried to bring this up to her at every opportunity while empathizing with her own trauma, but every time she was a lot of her. but every time I did, I was met with a somewhat scared, I don't want to talk about that. I remember seeing her on the morning of November 6th, looking at her phone with the same expression one makes upon opening a birthday card, and literally proclaiming,

yay, it's a good thing that he won. That was the day I first lost respect for her. She had a similar trite reaction to watching the events of January 6 on her phone, and she didn't want to talk about any of it. The human rights violations taking place at the Mexican border? Nope. The manhandling of the...

the coronavirus pandemic by the Trump administration and the blatant inadequacy of the American health care system? Nope. My transness? Nope. In the end, we had nothing left to talk about. Most of my family holds similar hateful views about transgender people, but I do have one cool aunt who lives out of state. Someday, I'll spend the holidays with her, though it isn't in the cards this year. In the meantime, there's a handful of charities in my area that let you adopt a child or family to buy Christmas presents for. I pick one of them to do every year. If I can't spend time with my own family, I can at least make someone else's family a little happier. Oh, I really love that. I really love that because I guess this is making me emotional, but

you know, in times when you are feeling disconnected from the people that you most want to feel connected to. And you just feel hopeless in some ways. You want to find something good that you can actually do. And sometimes we think of that in two grand of a way when really what we should be doing is like, just buy a present for someone. That is a good thing, you know? Yeah.

So Nate may not be doing the holidays with his mom anytime soon. And that's a decision that is his and his alone. We want to play you one more big. of feedback from Kristen. So I don't debate my family on politics on social media. Most of my family's on Facebook, which I don't use very much. I'm mostly on TikTok, and I have a TikTok that is very political. I post videos about it all the time.

My mom doesn't watch my TikTok. She doesn't really like TikTok. In person, however, we do talk politics. And my mom is very clear that she doesn't like it when people resort to Ed Harmon and attacks because I've been telling her the sorts of things people say to me online. Okay, so different filter bubbles here when it comes to social media. But what about when they get together? So as far as Thanksgiving goes, we generally try to keep politics off the table, not talk about them and talk about other things.

Off the table. Solid dad joke, Kristen. Solid. Nicely done. But what is not solid is Kristen's mom and stepdad when it comes to how they interact with and refer to Kristen's sister. My sister is trans and my mom is trans. trying to make amends with her and not say things that piss my sister off, even though they disagree on politics. My sister has agreed to just not talk about them. My sister has a hard line about being misgendered or dead named, so my mom has been working on that.

My stepdad doesn't seem to be as receptive as my mom does about using my sister's name, so he just avoids it. But I believe that really does bother my sister a lot. Kristen has a plan. Two-part plan. Part number one, bring her dog, a dog who needs things at the holidays to be chill. No yelling is allowed when he's around because that upsets him a lot. Number two?

I plan on bringing the game overcooked. Overecooked 2 is a game where you make food and it's just pure chaos and super fun. And I'm thinking that maybe that will help die down tensions. and we can have something else to fight about. It's a solid move, bringing a board game. Yeah, agreed. I'm assuming overcooked, too, is a board game. I don't really know.

But a game in general, I think that's a smart move. I think so, too. I mean, it's either a really smart move. I think it is a smart move, but I suppose it could also result in... More fights. More fights. Yeah, it depends on how seriously

your family takes competition on board games. But I think for our final... farewell, we should hear from A again, because we followed up with him the day after the election. A told us that the aunt who was hosting Thanksgiving had made some post-election posts that made the thought of seeing her in just a few weeks harder to stomach, even though this is also a person who has been kind to him his entire life. But he still thinks he's going to celebrate with his family, albeit for maybe a shorter visit, even if it's hard. I'm a big Lord of the Rings fan. And in the day since the election, I've been thinking about a scene from Return of the King where Sam is trying to find Frodo and Mordor and he feels like all hope is lost.

But he knows he has to keep going because that's really all he can do. And so he sings. And the last two lines of his song are, I will not say the day is done nor bid the stars farewell. And then later, you know, when he's found Frodo and he's reflecting on why those specific words came to him, he describes it as not a hopeful song but defiant. and that is just generally how I feel right now. I don't know if there's any reason to hope for things to get better, but I want to do something productive with all the anger I feel. So rather than, you know, social media arguing,

I'm trying to channel it into helping the queer communities here in Utah. The past couple of days, that's been on a pretty small scale, just checking in on queer friends and cousins and relatives, as well as caring for my husband. In the long term, I'd like to figure out larger ways to support the queer community here. I don't know what that will look like because I'm still thinking about it, but I want to take the pain that I feel and channel it into something that's fighting back against the hate around me that I see in the country and protects the people who are most vulnerable to it because I feel like that's most important right now.

You know, Ben, I think I thought that by putting the call out to Lissa, about the conversations that they were witnessing and or taking pardon in their own families with regards to politics. I thought maybe I'd have a better sense of what to do in my own family and in my own situation. And I don't. I'm shocked. Yeah. It's just so tricky because people can talk one way on social media.

and that sometimes can just feel really hurtful, sometimes hateful, and yet those people can still love you, and you can still love them. And I don't know how to make sense of that right now, but I think I do want to keep trying to find common ground and keep trying to understand why we say the things we do,

why we express the things that we express, And I don't want to give up on trying to find common ground. And I don't want to give up on trying to preserve relationships that I know really do matter for reasons that have nothing to do with who is in the Oval Office. And in the meantime, I hope that this episode at least made people feel a little less alone in the situations that they find themselves in right now with their family members. Yeah. I guess the thing that I think about is for me, and maybe for you too, as to people who, you know, we have different levels of privilege. But I think in comparison to some other people that we've heard from today, we are more privileged. I would say, to me, a big part of the answer is, like, build a relationship with your weird uncle.

Like, find a way to not just hang out on the holiday. but to have like more interaction and like that's part of the sacrifice that we can make that people can make when they feel like they can make that sacrifice to try to talk to a person enough that we can understand each other and maybe we can change the way that we feel in the world in a positive direction because I think about Q&on casualties like that subreddit a lot when we talk about this stuff and I think about how usually the way that people get removed from kind of stuck ways of thinking is there's someone in their life who refuses to give up on them and like demands to have a meaningful relationship with them despite all the nuttiness and that's how that person climbs out so I think like people who feel like they can and A is an inspiration in this regard.

People who feel like they can, they have the capacity to demand a meaningful relationship with somebody who is on the opposite end of the spectrum should do that. And that to me is the way out. Thank you to everyone who shared thoughts and feelings. We feel your rage, we feel your pain,

and they are valid. I feel you're funk too. They're valid. They matter, and we appreciate you. This episode was produced by Grace Tatter. It was co-hosted by myself, Amory Severson, and... Bonnie. It was sound designed by Emily Jenkowski.

The rest of our team is Dean Russell, managing producer Sumitajoshi, and our production manager, Paul Vikis. Endless thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and a dog that just will not talk. tolerate loud noises. No yelling. Huge thanks to all of our listeners who sent in voice memos and emails over the past several weeks. Even if you didn't hear yours, we really appreciate it, and it definitely shaped this episode. So thank you. We're talking to Diana.

A. Madeline. Erica. Nicholas. Connie. Ellen. Nate. Eric.

Sage. Kristen. Cynical contrarian. Vicky. Piper. If you've got an unsolved mystery and untold history or a crazy story, from the internets that you want us to tell. Hit us up.

Endless thread at WBUR.org. Bonnie. Happy Thanksgiving. Bonnie.