Endless Thread - Comfort maxing on the interwebs

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Sit back, relax and get cozy. As a matter of fact, why not put on your baggiest of clothes and burrow down in your snuggiest of blankets?  This week on Endless Thread, Ben and Amory are comfy-maxxing. They'll discuss how the internet is delivering comfort right now, including a look at delicious foods from childhood and an intriguing tip on how to sleep better at night. Show notes: Calling all dad's... Whats your easy go to dinners?! (Reddit) What’s your favorite comfort food from your culture? (Reddit) My weird but effective sleep trick: pretend I’m a medieval peasant (Reddit) This episode was produced by Kalyani Saxena and co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson. It was edited by Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Morotra Institute at BU Questrum School of Business. A recent episode, recorded at the WBUR Festival, asks what transforms an idea into a technology, a company, a job, or even an entire economy. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Emory, how comfortable are you? Are you comfortable? I'm cozy. Yeah, I got a sweatshirt.

I got my nice thick socks. I got my house shoes, which should never be seen by anyone outside of my actual house. They're the clonkiest most comfortable things I've ever owned. How about you? Yeah, I'm comfortable. I got my squishy. I got my old man sneakers on. with the big squishy souls in them.

Good. You know? Good. All right, we're talking comfort food today, and I got a little dish for you. But I want to start with guesses at what Amory's favorite comfort foods might be. So I'm thinking, like, a good steak. No. Oatmeal with lots of fix-ins is a guess that I have.

Yeah, I'd say, like, soup in every four. Oatmeal is like breakfast soup. Yeah, that's right. You're a soup lover. And then, yeah. And then you got your dinner soup. Like, how would you define comfort food if you could define comfort food? Like, what does that mean to you?

It's the food that makes you go, oh, yes, this is the life I want to be living. Food that makes you go, ooh? Yeah, food that makes you go, ooh. Food that makes me go he he he, he. Okay. That is less academic than I was hoping for, but it does feel accurate. It's curling up next to a cozy fire in food form. Okay, so I think you're like, you're kind of like circling around it in a good way.

The definition of comfort food has a lot to do with what you grew up with. So it has strong connections to home cooking. It can be connected to like childhood. It can be connected to home. Does that make sense? Does that ring true for you? Yeah. So my comfort foods, I'm kind of a shepherd's pie guy every once in a while when it comes to comfort food.

And I make them with impossible meat now. I make them with lentils. A little cardamom. Love a shepherd's pie. Yeah. I also really like in the summertime there's like a meal that I really like that is essentially cold noodles, cold Asian noodles with mint and like a bunch of fresh vegetables. Yeah. And a like peanut butter, lime, soy sesame sauce. Yum. But what strikes me, but that one is like that's not what I grew up. up with. Yeah.

And it's not connected to the home cooking that I experienced. My version of that is we, I make a vegan mozzarella, which it's very good. It's like, it's like, it's like mozzarella balls. They actually, they taste and operate just like balls of mozzarella. And we make. That's usually how the mozzarella comes. Well, I know people will be skeptical just saying like vegan mozzarella balls, but I'm Trust me, they're real balls.

And I make a capraise toast with them. So you like spread the mozzarella and then thinly sliced salt and powdered tomatoes and fresh basil and some balsamic olive oil drizzle on top. Love it. That's my, that's my summery comfort. Okay. I love to make a, I make a capraise sandwich in the summer as well. That's very similar.

So I feel you on that. Man, we could just talk about this, I'll say. Yeah, we could just keep going. You know, there's a, I would say there's a kind of a genre of posts on Reddit. Every couple of months, every couple of years. If you search Reddit, you will find posts. You know, you will discover food subreddits that you never knew existed. And so this genre of posts that I really love is a genre of post about comfort foods from around the world.

There was a post recently in the dad-at subreddit that said, calling all dads, what's your easy go-to dinners? Can you guess what the top answer to this is? It's got to be like nuggets. Right? Your kids went through a nugget phase. You're close. Are they still in a nugget phase?

They're always kind of in the hot dog. You're not getting warmer, but you're in the zone. Mac and cheese. Cazade. Oh, excellent. Or as I like to say, sometimes casidillas. That's how my mom legitimately pronounced it for years. We worked really hard on that.

A friend of mine was just talking about how when she goes out of town, her boyfriend just makes cassidias. He just buys tortillas and cheese. I don't think he's even putting anything else in them. It's just casadillas all day every day. That is incredible. This particular post that I'm looking at, I do kind of love because, again, it's full of these, like, it's full of some, of course, heavy dad conversation. So like the top post is just cassidias, period. And then somebody said, cassidia tip, put a layer of shredded cheese in the pan first.

Then you do your cassidia as normal. It's like a delicious, crispy, cheesy hug. And then someone says, Dan, dude, I'm going to try this. Is it like a crunch wrap where you got the different textures going on? 110% my guy. Use it under tacos or sunny side up eggs. Your taste buds are in for an adventure.

And then somebody just says, let's go. I do love this sort of like comfort food, dad energy flowing through this particular post that I'm looking at. But it does really frequently because of, you know, the sort of, you know, that thing on the internet where you can reach people from all over the world, it does very quickly go international. People are talking about red beans. People are talking about different noodles to make for their kids. People talk about anything crock pot, chicken parm. I love a crock pot.

Somebody says chicken parm, you can do it with chicken. nuggets and spaghetti with sauce and a baking dish topped with cheese and broiled in the oven to melt the cheese. That's not a bad move. Spam fried rice. That sounds pretty good. So it really does turn into this like lovely conversation, I think, amongst at least the people in the data subreddit here. Can I share one with you that I had growing up? Yeah, definitely. I'm just remembering, Like as we're talking about family and things that we would do, my mom would make something called Hot Dog Roundups. And she'd take, I can't remember if I've even talked about this on this show before,

but she'd buy, you know, like the croissant dough, the just like in a tube dough. And you take a little piece of cheese and you put it in the dough and you take a little slice of hot dog and you wrap it up in a little, you know, little pillow. And then you bake it. I think you bake it because you melt the cheese and you cook the dough. And it's like it's like a miniature pig in a blanket.

Hot dog roundup. Hot dog roundup. Hey kids, we're having hot dog roundups tonight. Come on, come on out of the yard, kids. We're having hot dog roundups. Oh, you sound just like my mom. I do like... She's from Jersey, so she'd say hot dog.

Hot dog. Hot dog roundups kids. Come in. Come on in. There you go. You're getting closer. But I do love where these conversations go because, again, you really learn, you kind of learn, it's interesting. You learn a couple of layers, right?

Like, you learn tips and tricks that expand your own, like, world, right? And I love that you. you just use the example of hot dog roundups because there's another post that I was looking at from five years ago, from a subreddit that I didn't know existed called Eat Cheap and Healthy. And somebody asked, what's your favorite comfort food from your culture? Which gets a lot of great answers. The top answer there is Ruski Perogi with melted butter, fried onions,

and this is a technical term, a fuck ton of pepper. hmm so you you just get these ideas it's really nice to get these ideas and also like simple ideas and ideas that really connect back to home cooking you're not we're not talking about like restaurant meals necessarily we're talking about home cooking um and so you get a sense not just of um you know all the different places that people come from um but also like what home feels like to them and that's a really nice feeling. And whether it's hot where you live or cold where you live, whether it's summer or winter,

people have these sense memories connected to the food that they eat. And there is a lot of posts out there that, you know, talk about their version of, you know, chicken tendies and mac and cheese or whatever else you're asking mom for. or dad, right? Or dad, yeah, in my house. He's a dad talking about what they make for their kids. That's true.

So what is that dish for your kids? I've been making Vampiro tacos. What's that? It's like a taco that's like extra kind of red looking with the food that you put inside of the taco, I guess. But also it has this burnt cheese on the bottom. of the taco. Actually, it reconnects to the casidia approach, which is you put some cheese on the bottom and just straight into the pan and then you put the taco actually on top

of that and you fry it up and you get this crispy cheese situation that also looks kind of red because it's burnt. And that's, I think, where the vampiro part of vampiro tacos comes from. So I've been making those recently and my daughter and son both just love those. A little saucy sauce. A little pan pyrr sauce. Come on, dogs.

Oh, yeah. Every time I make them, my daughter is like, Daddy, these are the best tacos you have ever made. And that happens every time I make them. And they don't actually change that much. So maybe that will be her comfort food when she's an adult. Okay. My daughter did something that actually blew my mind this week, which was she came to me and she said, Daddy, I've made a decision. I am not going to watch TV anymore at the end of the day.

I'm just going to help you cook because I want to learn how to cook and I want to spend that time with you and I don't need to watch TV anymore. Which really actually blew my mind. Well, this is lovely. Thank you for this comforting food quest. that we are recording right at lunchtime on this particular day. I know, man. I'm kidding. I'm hungry.

When my stomach is like, yeah, remember how you didn't eat lunch before you did this? My bad. Well, after the break, I have a comforting story for you. So comforting, in fact, it might just low you to sleep. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Brow? A podcast from the Morotra Institute at BU Questrum School of Business. The breakthroughs that shape our future often start with years of fundamental research. We have to advocate for people continuing to believe that science matters, research matters.

Follow is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast to preview a recent episode in which host Kurt Nickish talks with Boston University President Dr. Melissa Gilliam about the value of fundamental research. I'm Dean Russell, co-creator of WBUR's new family-friendly podcast, The Midnight Rebellion. This story transports you to a future shaped by climate change. The water is high, seaweed is everywhere, and the city is ruled by salty robots. The good news, you choose what happens. The decisions you make can turn the tide.

All episodes are out now. This summer, find your next great adventure at WBUR. or slash midnight or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Ben, you know this about me, but I'm a bad sleeper. I'm a wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if I will ever fall back asleep, kind of sleeper. Yeah. Yeah.

So. I'm sorry, dude. That's okay. I'm working. I'm always, always working on it, which is why whenever I see any content online or elsewhere about sleep tricks, sleep hacks, here's what you should actually be doing. I'm all in on that stuff. When I think of you trying to figure out how to sleep, what I picture is a very, like, accessoryized situation. You have, like, a sleep mask. You have, like, very intense, a pillow structure

that's, like, around you, you have blankets. You have, like, things close by that you might need. Totally wrong. I could have more accessories for sure. I do have a sleep mask, but I don't wear it consistently. I do, I am open to all of the new tricks and hacks. So when I saw a Reddit post about sleep that actually got served up to me on Instagram, I was like, great, yes, here we go. But for this one, I was also thoroughly amused. So this comes from R slash sleep, the sleep subreddit. which all my years on Reddit, I've never been on the sleep subreddit before. I don't know why, but community upwards of 300,000 people, helping each other sleep. And the title of this post is,

My Weird But Effective Sleep Trick, Pretend I'm a medieval peasant. So I'm going to read you, I'm going to read you this post. This is just my life trick. This is what I love to do. Yeah. So they say,

After trying everything, melatonin, white noise, breathing, you name it. I found a trick that actually helps me fall asleep. I pretend I'm a medieval peasant. I sleep in a ditch covered in mud. Basically. They say, No emails, no bills, no doom scrolling, just a tired cabbage farmer lying on a straw bed,

no wolves nearby, nothing to do but sleep. It sounds dumb, but the mental shift works. No pressure to optimize, rest, just old squirrel. exhaustion. I fall asleep faster pretending I've never seen a smartphone than I ever did using one to track my sleep. Try it. Pick your own vibe. Bard, Viking, 1800s librarian, just keep it low tech and low stress. Cheers, guys. The thoughts? You know I'm going to love this. Yeah. I'm in. I'm in. I like cabbage farmer. That's good. That means they're also kind of smelly, which is good. I mean, you could just then be worrying about your crop. But

the comments for this post are great. This person is not alone. Someone says, works for me. I'm a Duchess living in a palace. Very cozy, safe, and stress-free. Another person says, I imagine that I'm an elf wandering through a peaceful forest and I arrive at my cabin, light a fire in the hearth, relax in a soft chair with a cat curled up in my lap, and I'm out like a light. Someone else says, I'm sitting on the moon looking to towards the earth. It's quiet, peaceful, and all the drama on earth is so tiny and far away. I really like that one. But my favorite, Ben, is someone saying, I act like I'm a stick of butter, melting. And someone says, really excited to bring this up to my therapist as a strategy and see what she says.

That is good. I like that. I know. So again, I saw this up. I saw this up. on Instagram originally. So when I searched for the actual post in R-slash sleep on Reddit, I found something interesting, which is there are several posts that read kind of like this. The original one, or the one that I saw first again, is my weird but effective sleep trick. Pretend I'm a medieval peasant. Then a few months after that, there's a post titled, My Dumb Sleep Hack That Actually Works. I roleplay a medieval merchant. Hmm.

Then, even more recently, from about a month ago at the time that we're recording this, my weird but effective sleep trick, so it starts the same way as the original post, pretend I'm a Victorian child who just had a very long day in the factory. Huh. So, these are all similar. They're all the same vibe. And I was like, oh no. Is this another A?

thing that someone has just found a formula of post that works well, gets engagement, appeals to Redditor's sense of humor in particular. And so then I click on these other posts and start reading the body of them. And they all have some similar components. One is they all have this list of noes. So the peasant one, the original one, says no emails, no bills, no doom scrolling, just a tired cabbage farmer lying on a straw bed, nothing to do but sleep. The medieval merchant one says, no inbox, no bills, just a wooden bed, boots off, candle guttering, nothing to do but sleep.

The Victorian Child Post says, no sleep tracking, no optimizing, no 478 breathing, just a small Victorian child who has earned his rest. Another component, they all have this like, pick your X part of the post. So in the peasant post, it says, pick your own vibe, bard, Viking, 1800s librarian. Just keep it low tech and low stress. The merchant post, pick a sleepy world and keep it dumb and analog. Lighthousekeeper, caravan guard, 1800s librarian. Low tech, low stakes, sleepy.

I'm falling out of love with this. The Victorian Child Post, pick your era, pick your peasant, pick your struggle. So I investigate I know So I investigate the posters themselves The Victorian Child one That OP has their posts hidden Which as we've talked about

I know is a thing you can do And that some people do actually do But I find it suspicious I find this suspicious The medieval merchant post Don't be suspicious Don't be suspicious The medieval merchant post

Vegetable underscore lover Is be real, this person posts a lot in the psilocybin mushrooms subreddit and the wellbutrin subreddit, which is an antidepressant. But I'm still wary of this, you know, these posts are formulaic to me. And then the O.P. of the peasant post, the first one that I found, and the oldest of the three, is write underscore energy underscore 8326, which we have talked about on the show before that particular formula of username, which I know you can have Reddit generate a username for you. But again, that's another thing that makes me suspicious of a bot account.

Oh, no. So I feel both things. I feel like this is actually a fun thought experiment, a fun thing that I will try. And I hate that it's maybe all or at least partially a ploy. But I do like that it got me to the Sleep Subreddit, which, as I mentioned, has like more than 300,000 people in it. Some of those have to be real people. And some of those real people are actually trying to help other people sleep. Wow. So I guess tonight, when I'm trying to fall asleep, I'm.

I'm going to pretend I live in a world of real breathing, thinking people. No bots. No data centers. No people try to make money off of other people under the guise of pretending to pretend to be a medieval peasant or merchant or Victorian child. Just real human beings helping each other for the sake of helping each other. Wow. Yeah, I mean, like on the one hand, it's like whatever we can do to get Amory to fall asleep, I'm in for, you know, I'll do whatever.

But on the other hand, it's like, I really don't like this kind of like subtle marketing stuff. We're kind of being tricked, you know? And I don't like that. As a peasant, as a as a peasant of the 2020s, I don't like that. And hey, if you want to try it and pretend that you're a medieval peasant, good luck. And I hope you're just not kept up stressing out about your cabbage crop because there's no such thing as a simple stress-free life in any century. It can be very stressful. The Vikings, the lighthouse keepers, we've all got our stress.

God, I hope this year's crop survives. Yeah. Maybe you'll need to make yourself some comfort food to de-stress from my comfort story. Make a cassidia. Endless Threat is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Kalyani Saxana, a Regency-era Romance librarian. It was co-hosted by me, Amory Severson, a farm sanctuary animal caretaker. And me, Ben Brock Johnson, the town crier, who also moved.

Moonlight says Court Jester, we also reported and brought the stories today. This episode was edited by Dave Shaw, the local innkeeper, mix and sound design by our production manager and medieval blacksmith, Paul Vicus. The rest of our team is a traveling band of clavacord players. Grace Tatter, Dean Russell, Emily Jankowski, and our senior managing clavacord player, Summit to Joshi. Endless thread is a show about the blurred lines between the cabbage crop that is doing just fine, sleep easy. all good. And the one that's being ravaged by bow weevils. If you have an untold history and unsolved mystery or some other wild story from the internet, you know what to do. Hit us up. Endless thread at WBUR. Dot org. Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media

strategy people? Scrolling through spreadsheets, searching for an audience that pays twice as much attention to your ads than they do on social? Let me introduce you to fans. And they're here with me on Spotify. Trust me, I know fans. They don't skip, they stay for hours. They don't move on, they manifest. They're not a demographic group. They're fans.

Spotify advertising. You're among fans. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrum School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts. And listen on for a preview of a recent episode in which Boston University president, Dr. Melissa Gilliam, discusses why solving society's biggest challenges requires ideas from many disciplines working together.

So in universities, we run the gamut. We go from cells to society and our types of research that sets us up for entrepreneurship, innovation, company formation. It's very tempting to say, what's the return on investment? I want to see these translate quickly to society. but what you have to remember is that there's often a very long lead time to getting to those discoveries. And there's a lot of serendipity. So in universities, we focus on something called curiosity-driven research.

It's a place where we allow people to pursue things that matter, even if you cannot figure out what the application is. What we're now doing at our institution is we're focusing on something called convergent research. So you use the example of photonics. B. you created something called neurophotonics, the combination of the study of light, but also thinking about how the study of light contributes to brain health. You created something called synthetic biology, how the insights of engineering can be used to advance biological processes. So convergence is this idea of bringing lots of fields together. Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken, wherever you get your podcasts,

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